Raven L. Veal, PhD

How do you define yourself? It’s a question a lot of us will wrestle with at some point in life, and according to Raven L. Veal, PhD, understanding the answer to this is a critical part of design. She speaks from experience, too — as both a design lecturer and a strategic design lead, she definitely did not get to this level of success without understanding her truth at a deep level.

We started off with a brief introduction about her work at Citi Ventures, and then explored her lecture work at the University of Texas and what she learns from her students. Raven also talked about her mom as her source of creative inspiration, and shared her thoughts on design research, future tech, the role of art, moral imagination, and spirituality in designing technology. Trailblazers like Raven definitely let me know that we’re in good hands for the future!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right. So tell us who you are and what you do.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Hi, my name is Raven Veal. I’m based in Austin, Texas, and I am a strategic design lead at Citi Ventures. I am also a lecturer at the University of Texas School of Design and Creative Technologies where I teach for the Masters in Arts and Design for Health program.

Maurice Cherry:
How has 2022 been going for you so far?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Oh my gosh, 2022 has just been an influx of emotions. It’s been exciting. It’s been exhausting at times. It’s been a learning experience for me as far as really just wanting to dive into rest and what that looks like, especially when I’ve been so accustomed to a very fast paced hustle, grind culture context.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
One of my favorite inspirations is Trisha Huey and her Nap Ministry where she says, “Justice looks like a space to rest.” And so I’ve been trying to practice that and lean into that a little bit more. But overall I think 2022 has taught me a lot of important things about myself and others.

Maurice Cherry:
Diving into rest right now sounds so good. I guess, because I’m recording this at the end of a long work day, I’m like, “Oh, diving into rest is… ” I love what they’re doing with the Nap Initiative. I think especially over these past few years, it’s become something that so many people have empathized with over the pandemic.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Exactly. A 100%. I love and just honor and respect the work that she’s doing.

Maurice Cherry:
Overall, you mentioned this hustle grind culture, how have you been managing yourself through the pandemic?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah, so I think one practical thing that I’ve been trying to do is to schedule for myself moments of joy throughout the day. So I will typically try to block off the first half of my day, it is a privilege I’m able to do this, just for heads downtime. And then I’ll dedicate the latter part of my day to meetings.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
But even in between, I’ll schedule, maybe 30 minutes or so for a dance break or I’m a woman of faith. So I’ll set aside some time to just pray or to kind of read the Psalms or just do something that is just, or walk my dog, go outside, get away from the screen, but just really try to schedule those pockets of joy and rest throughout my day. Literally, in my calendar, on my to-do list and make it a priority for me.

Maurice Cherry:
I’m the same way. I’ll tell people if it’s not on my calendar, I’m not doing it. I schedule all the time. I’ll do focus time in the morning. I’ll schedule some time after work, if I have it, and I usually try to make it.

Maurice Cherry:
So I have at least one day, and it’s usually Friday, where after 4:00 PM do not disturb is on, don’t call me, don’t talk, that’s my time. You can talk to me on Saturday, but anything after 4:00 PM on Friday, it’s a wrap.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Exactly. And claiming just that time for yourself establishing that boundary. So healthy. Yes. Yeah. A 100%

Maurice Cherry:
Now I want to talk about your work at Citi Ventures. I know we can’t kind of go too much into it, but you mentioned you’re a strategic design lead there. Can you talk about what strategic design actually is? What is that?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah. So there are a lot of names for this. I was actually talking to a colleague about this. So strategic design, you also hear business or venture design. Some people say design strategy, but essentially it’s the skill of addressing systemic challenges with innovative approaches aligned across several dimensions.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So you’ll have business viability. That’s the question of, do we have a distinctive sustainable business strategy? You have user desirability, are we adequately addressing the core need of the community? Technical feasibility, so is the proposed solution possible to create and bring to life? And then I like to add a fourth dimension, which is ethical impact. So how well does this approach optimize good and minimize harm and not just on an individual level, but also a societal and environmental level as well?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So the core of actually what I do is research driven, but it’s more so generative and strategic design in the sense that you have to have a really critical and forward thinking eye to provide direction for the team that brings all of those pieces together.

Maurice Cherry:
What would you say just a typical day looks like for you?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah, so a typical day at Citi Ventures, it varies a bit, so I may actually be conducting research speaking with stakeholders and one on one interviews. Right now we’re running a diary study on one of our projects. So that may look like making sure that the participants of that specific research study are engaged, analysis, playing back our research findings in creative and engaging ways.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
We also have, I may be participating in a team meeting that day. I’m a part of two teams. So the Racial Equity Design and Data Initiative, and we have syncs where we come together, discuss what we’re working on, and kind of what the next steps are.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And then also I’m a part of the UX Research Team, as well, and we have different meetings where we touch base on methodology. We talk about what’s going on from a current event perspective as it relates to research. And so all of that runs the gamut of a week and I may even touch multiple components of that within a given day.

Maurice Cherry:
It sounds pretty busy, like a lot of research, a lot of meetings, but I guess with something called Citi Ventures it sounds like it is pretty kind of futuristic and forward thinking. So that makes sense.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
It’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun and I will just shout out to the team because there is an element of flexibility to the day that I feel like is necessary for this type of work. But that also makes it pretty enriching and eliminates some of the burnt outness that you might get from having so many things to do.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Now outside of that work, you mentioned you’re also a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin for their School of Design and Creative Technologies. How did you first get started there?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I first got started last year, actually. The courses that I teach are field work and design. So I taught that in the fall really kind of exploring ethnographic methods of research and design. And then this semester I taught storytelling for presentations. So the context of presenting your work in a meaningful way and you know what?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I just have a passion for empowering the next generation of designers and researchers in this space. And it’s actually in the program that I teach for is specifically design and health. And my entire background is in healthcare, public health, psychology, behavioral science. And I think that design has a very powerful place in that industry and all of the students remarkable.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I teach both medical students. So it’s Dell Medical students and also current students in that program. But to circle back and answer your question. So I got involved in it last year, just as a way for me to kind of give back in that specific way and inspire aspiring designers.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Design and health is a really big field. I think we look at technology, things like wearables and stuff like that, but really the whole healthcare experience, I would say over the past, I don’t know, maybe 10 or 15 years has really been transformed by design, whether it’s actually designing different apps and programs for people to access services or even just making different interfaces and forms and things easier for people to understand.

Maurice Cherry:
I don’t know if people really kind of think about just how much design plays into health like that?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
It really is. And healthcare itself is such a relational industry. And I think that in the past, and sometimes currently now, there’s an over emphasis on the emerging technologies and technology in the space, but everything is to the end of how do we, I guess, uplift and optimize the relationships between patients and caregivers, between patients and providers, between providers and payers, it’s very relational oriented.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And so it’s really interesting and intriguing, the role of design, in building experiences and technologies to support the optimization of those relationships.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I’d also say even to kind of build trust. If we just think about over the past few years with this pandemic, so much of whether it’s forms or commercials or any sort of advertisements or things that talk about prevention, washing your hands, wearing masks, et cetera, like that, design has really played a very interesting part in, I think, how information has been spread about COVID.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I completely agree. And that word comes up a lot, trust, especially kind of with the history of certain communities, our community in this space. I use a term like progressive trust, right? You’re not going to be able to get a 100% of trust back immediately, especially if there have been certain groups that have been wronged in the past, but how can you slowly rebuild that? By being reliable, by being consistent, by being transparent about in the design of the experiences that you’re delivering.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So yes, love that word, trust. And I think it’s something that is very pervasive in the industry right now.

Maurice Cherry:
How has it been just kind of teaching during the pandemic?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
You know what? It’s been interesting. Okay. So in the fall, my course was completely virtual and I think that has its pros and cons. So I guess the pros are it’s immediately accessible. You can essentially roll out bed and like join a Zoom call and be in the class, but there’s no replacement for that kind of in person interaction, especially when I was teaching field work and design that there was still that in person component, right?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
When you’re doing ethnography, you can do it. There’s such a thing as digital ethnography of course, but really kind of immersing yourselves in the world and environments of those that you’re trying to serve, you have to do that in person.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So I would say it was a welcome challenge, again, with both his pros and cons this year, it’s been a little more kind of relaxed in the sense that we’ve been able to meet in person. So yeah, I’ve experienced a gamut of emotions, kind of teaching in both modalities.

Maurice Cherry:
You’re teaching in Texas in the South, I’m here in Georgia, in Atlanta.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
It is, especially since there aren’t necessarily any, I guess, widespread restrictions or you have to do this, you have to do that. So it’s really kind of up to the professor, or at least in my experience, it has been in terms of what kind of rules or regulations will implement.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I tend to err on the side of caution. So when we were meeting in person last fall, I encouraged the use of mask and that we’re safely distanced when we did meet in person. So yeah. I mean, it’s definitely been a challenge in that regard.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. What do you learn from the students there? What do they teach you?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Ooh, I think they teach me just the need for more tangible and practical modalities of learning, specifically as it relates to design, I’m a professor, well, adjunct professor of practice. So I’m still in industry and then also teaching as well. And when you are kind of in a “lab based setting,” it can err on the side of theory.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And I think the students continuously remind me in their kind of engagements and interactions as they’re actively seeking jobs in industry, or as they’re actively engaging patients as in their residencies or what have you that there’s a need for just very tactical practical education.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Not just theory, but how do we apply this to kind of what we’re doing? How do we apply this to where it is that we’re trying to go? I think that’s one thing that I’ve learned from them. Also too, that there’s just a diversity of thought and then a diversity of learning styles, not everyone learns the same way.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And I think it’s been really interesting to explore creative ways to engage people, how to make design education accessible to different types of learners. As you can imagine, when we’re on Zoom, making sure that you have the closed captioning on, but then how do you engage people who may be easily distracted in that type of setting or environment? So I think that’s the second thing that I’ve learned from the students too.

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm. I want to get more into your background, including this new initiative that you’re working on now, but I want to switch gears here a little bit. I want to talk about just kind of your origin story. Where did you grow up?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah, so I grew up, I’m a native Texan, so I grew up in Fort Worth, Funky Town, home of the stockyards, but they coming up. I grew up there. My mom actually, she, oh, I love her so much. She’s my creative inspiration. She had me when she was 16 years old. She did an amazing job even in that context. But yeah, she was kind of my introduction to all things creative.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
She’s an amazing artist. She can draw, she can sing, even though she doesn’t do it publicly or anything like that. But yeah, that’s kind of where I grew up. My neighborhood, Stop Six, in Fort Worth, Texas down the street from Dunbar High School. I personally went to Arlington Heights High School. It’s kind of weird. It’s Arlington Heights, but it technically is in Fort Worth, not in Arlington, but yeah, I grew up with myself. It was my little brother and sister. There’s like an 11 year gap there, but yeah, that’s where I grew up and a little bit about my context.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, with your mom being a creative, I’d imagine you were probably exposed to a lot of design and art and everything early on, right?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah. Definitely a lot of art and musically too. So one thing that people may not know is that I used to rap back in the day.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I had a whole bunch of different, don’t ask me to rap, but I used to put together different girl groups. So in high school we had a group called UGQ, so Underground Queens, and if you’re from Houston, UGK, Underground Kings, so it was a ode to them.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
But yeah, my mom, she was young, right? So we were listening to rap music together. We were listening to Lil Kim together just different creative outlets like that. She taught me how to draw. So I would draw with her and my brother and sister are amazing artists, they’re better than me. They’re amazing artists as well.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So yeah, I was always in a very creative space. I have a group of cousins and every year we had what’s called Cousin Camp. So we go down to my aunt’s house, my Aunt Ricky’s house in Pearland, Texas and I would be the cousin that’s putting everyone together to do something fun.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Like, “Okay, hey guys, let’s make a play and let’s act it out.” Or, “Hey, let’s create a family award show and let’s act it out.” Or, “Let’s create a song.” We actually did a remake of Tupac song, what is it called? When he’s like, “All I need in this life of sin, is me and my girlfriend.”

Maurice Cherry:
Me and my girlfriend, yeah.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
We remade that one to like, “All we need in this life of sin, is me and my cousins. So I’m the person in the family like, “Okay, Raven’s always going to kind of get all the cousins and then people together to do something creative.” And I think a lot of that came from my mom and just her just creativity in general. I was really up under her and yeah, just absorbing and observing all that in her.

Maurice Cherry:
That sounds like a lot of fun and growing up around a bunch of cousins and everything like that. That sounds fun.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you’re growing up, you’re kind of exposed to all of this stuff. You end up going to Texas A&M< University, starting out in undergrad, you majored in psychology and for your master's, you kind of focused on public health. How was your experience there at Texas A&M? Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah. So A&M was an experience. I did want to be, actually become a psychiatrist until I was like, “Oh, I don’t really want to go to medical school or go down this route.” But yeah, it was pretty engaging. I met a lot of friends there, actually met my husband there. He majored in engineering and we met our junior year.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I think the last year or so I took a course in nutrition, I think, it was an elective and my professor, Dr. Joanne Luton, rest in peace. She actually introduced me to the field of public health. And she was like, “Hey, have you ever considered dressing people? Not just on an individual level, but on a population based level.” And that really intrigued me. And so she was very instrumental in me applying to my master’s program in public health.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
She gave me a full ride, essentially Alan Foundation Fellowship. And yeah, during that time too, I got a certificate in Health Systems and Design as a part of the College of Architecture at A&M. And that was also me trying to tap into my creative side and really understand and explore, how can I use creativity in this space to not just affect people on an individual level, but on a larger kind of population based level?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And so that was pretty interesting trying to understand how the design of architecture and space of hospitals, of wellness centers, how that influences health in that way. So I would say overall, my time at A&M was pretty pleasant.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, it sounds like you were kind of early to the game with kind of bringing that knowledge of merging design and health in this way. So it wasn’t something that, I don’t know, was that kind of the spark for what you’re doing now?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I think so. I can’t run from who I am, right? So I’m a creative at heart and I’ve always been trying to, I call it the art of the pivot, how do I, at the same time, support myself and do something that I feel like will make money and keep me afloat, but then it’s also authentic to me?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And so I’ve always been on this quest to try to merge both sides of my brain. How do I integrate the creative part of who I am into this space that maybe is not traditionally seen as creative?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I don’t know when people think about, or here public health, I don’t think people think creative, I don’t know. But yeah, always trying to, maybe it did start there as far as me trying to merge those worlds.

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm. Now, after A&M you did research work at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston for a little over two years. Tell me about your research work there?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah. So University of Texas Health Science Center. So that was when I did my PhD program and that kind of funneled up into my dissertation in which I was trying to use data driven technologies in that sense, like smartphone technology to assess mental health, specifically among college students.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So obviously, unfortunately, depression is very common among college students. And so I was trying to explore, are there ways of both actively and passively trying to identify for that before it’s too late? And so that’s really what my research work was about. Trying to understand how to leverage some of the geospatial technology in your phone, so you flip it on and it can locate you.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
But there are ways to kind of use some of that data kind of combined with other forms of data to assess whether or not your behaviors are peculiar, for lack of a better term, to alert or notify other people that you may be in trouble or there may be a need.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And also part of that was trying to prototype a potential mobile application that could deliver that type of service as well. And so that’s, I think I have my dissertation linked on my website if anyone’s interested. I wouldn’t imagine, but yeah, that pretty much kind of summarizes some of the research work that I did there.

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm. And so you’re kind of working with tech and design also while you’re doing this research work, it kind of sounds like this was maybe a bit of a breakthrough moment in a way?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Absolutely. I do want to kind of shout out one of my main advisors, Dr. Ross Shegog, and he actually was doing some work on usability research work for a specific technology, and I’d never heard of that before. I never heard of being able to do research in that space. And that’s one of the things that inspired the topic for my dissertation. And so he was pretty instrumental in opening up that world.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Like, “Hey, there are these emerging technologies that are starting to be used in this space.” Specifically the healthcare industry, how do we ensure that they are safe and effective and impactful for end users? And that really inspired me, and intrigued me, especially as I saw a lot of these emerging trends with tech happening in healthcare.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So I would say that definitely served as a breakthrough in helping me to pivot my work and my intention from academia into industry.

Maurice Cherry:
I’m curious, what do you think about this new class of wearables that are out here as it relates to healthcare or public health? Of course you have things like Apple Watches, but I’ve seen sensory rings, I’ve seen sunglasses, I’ve seen pendants. What are your thoughts on this kind of new class of health tech wearables?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
There’s a lot of conversation around wearables, especially as it relates to engagement, how often people are actually using them, the actual design of them that when you kind of get into the wearables or getting into the fashion space. So being able to design them in such a way that people want to wear them on a consistent basis, so you can get that consistent data. And then also, yeah, the quality of the data itself and what you’re using for.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
There’s a lot of talk and exploration around data transparency and data ownership, consumers being able to own the data that are being used, not just to provide services to you individually, but are typically aggregated in data to inform other things. But we may not always hear about that. It’s called data capitalism. And there’s a lot of research around that just in terms of the ethics of that.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
But yeah, there’s a lot, you just let me know how deep to go, but I think in general it can be useful. I think about, my grandparents, again, rest in peace, and how there could be utility in that sense, especially as a caregiver and you want to make sure that they’re okay.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I can see just from a preventive standpoint, I think Apple Watch is kind of working on things that can prevent certain things from happening, heart attacks or things like that. So I think there’s a lot of utility there. I would just be mindful again, of both the accessibility and then the ethics around the design, and transparency of what you’re doing.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I think about my mom, I think probably still wears her Fitbit, even though I don’t know if Fitbit is still in now with Apple Watch? I would imagine it probably is, but I think it’s interesting because now we’re sort of approaching this space where you have these types of wearables across generations, right?

Maurice Cherry:
I think it was one thing when they first came out with things like Fitbit, et cetera, or pedometers, for example, that were pretty high tech, but low tech compared to what we would see out of the Apple Watch that can detect your heartbeat or see if you had a fall or something like that.

Maurice Cherry:
Something that I also think about with this as it relates to kind of health tech are kind of, I guess, I don’t know, I guess end cases. And when I say end cases, I’m thinking what happens if you’re using a wearable from a company that has your health data, and then the company goes under? Where does your health data go? Does it just vanish into the ether?

Maurice Cherry:
I’m thinking of like the internet of things and how sometimes I just heard about this company Insteon that used to do a bunch of smart bulbs and things like that. And then the company went under and now people are just kind of stuck with this hardware that they can’t update that no longer works. It’s just obsolescence due to bankruptcy.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Oh, wow. Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
I don’t know. I’m just curious about that. What the ethics are behind that sort of stuff. I don’t know if that’s something that is kind of part of what you think about when it comes to design and health?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah. I think that data ownership is a really huge thing. I even think about companies, it’s not necessarily a wearable, but just 23andMe where you’re…

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, yeah.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
… Giving your genetic data and information. And then they’re turning around using it in clinical trials and oftentimes be, well, most of the times, being compensated for that, but then you don’t either see or know that’s even happening.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And so I think that there’s a lot of both conversation and action around, how do we, again, kind of empower, data empowerment, how do we both make these kind of privacy and confidentiality agreements terms and conditions, more salient for people? So they’re not just checking a box and they know what’s actually going on with their data.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And then how do we follow up and enforce, like you said, what happens if the company goes over? What happens to the data that should be clearly outlined and then communicated back to the consumer. People should be clearly able to opt out if they do not want their data used in that context for, or to opt in, but it should be very clear.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And transparency is a really, really huge thing. I think we haven’t had that, especially in this industry in the past, healthcare itself is very paternalistic. And so I think that, I’m hopeful and optimistic, that’s currently changing and I do see efforts in ways that’s changing too.

Maurice Cherry:
Now you’ve held down a lot of other research jobs and fellowships. I want to talk about your work that you did at IBM as a design researcher. I first heard you speak during last year’s State of Black Design. Talk to me about that?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah, so I love my IBM family. When I was there I mainly worked on the clinical development side, so leading and conducting research to produce insights for that. I also, during my time there, and this is what I spoke about at the State of Black Design conference, but the IBM Racial Equity and Design Initiative. And so while I was there, just worked with an amazing group of talented people, including Nigel Prentice, and a bunch of others, I don’t want to go run the list of the gamut, but they know who they are.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And yeah, just had the privilege of being able to help to lead the development and publication of a leadership guide for design managers. And really that’s kind of looking at how do you help cultivate a culture within the organization for Black designers and other designers of color where they not only want to come here, but they want to stay here.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And so that’s kind of essentially what that guide tries to lay out and provoke and design managers and leaders who read it. But yeah, my time there was, I’m so grateful. Shout out to Jodi Cutler. I think she’s now at HEB. And also Rob Pierce.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I don’t know. I really love my IBM family. I miss them. And I love that they’re continuing the work. My time there was a joy, nothing but good things to say.

Maurice Cherry:
How is your work now as a strategic design lead different from your earlier work as a design researcher?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yes. I think my work now is a lot more generative in the sense that it’s almost before we even have a product or something to create, it’s really more about the problem finding and the problem scoping.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Whereas my work at IBM was more so evaluative research. So we have an existing legacy platform or product, how is it currently working? What can we do to improve it? And now it’s like, “Okay, here’s this larger issue, what aspect of the issue are we trying to solve?” So I would say that’s the main difference kind of going from more evaluative design research to more generative research and strategy

Maurice Cherry:
In your opinion, what role does art, spirituality, and the moral imagination play in the design of future technology?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
On a personal level I believe that the greatest innovations in society kind of stem from internal and cultural transformation. And one of my personal beliefs is that our inner world shapes our outer world.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So in other words, who we are as people, our world views, our character, what we define as right and wrong, all of our biases, both good and bad, that influences what we choose to bring into the world. And so, because of that, I think that introspection, or introspective research, is a critical part of design and should be a required part of the process.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And this can look like I’m recalling Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel. She has this really amazing exercise to help teams identify their positionality and core elements of their identity. So your race, ethnicity, your socioeconomic status, your marital status, and how that shapes how you work together, both what’s present and the gaps.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
But in addition to that, I’m also a woman of faith, and I grew up in the church, primarily Baptist, we’re here down South. So my belief in God is a huge part of my identity. And because of that, I strongly believe that design is very spiritual, in the way that you’re taking something intangible and materializing it.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So two other things that I’m exploring are the power of art and then moral imagination as it relates to design. Now with art, a lot of designers actually come from the art world, and art itself is so powerful just for expressing who we are and then also who we aspire to be, individually and culturally.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And I think we can also learn a lot from artists. I think about how storytelling is such a huge part of design and you have Nigerian novelist, Chinua Achebe. He’s so profound in the way that he tells stories.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
What if we were to take, not take in an extractive stance, but be inspired by the way that he tells stories and use that when we’re designing? I think about digital ethnography and what we could learn from photographers Gordon Parks, who said, “With the eye sees is its own what the heart can perceive is a very different matter.”

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So that’s what I think about in terms of art and how we can integrate that into the design process as a way of both understanding who we are and our identities more, and then also being aspirational in who we want to be.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And then with moral imagination, I think that in and of itself is just our ability to look beyond profit, to understand what we’re designing affects the values, the beliefs, the behaviors of society. How do we imagine the greatest good. How do we define that good?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And so, yeah, I’m really interested in exploring how do we do that? Both applying moral imagination to the process and the way that we design, and then also to the output in what we design.,

Maurice Cherry:
That’s fascinating. Wow. How did you sort of, I guess, work to kind of create all this, is this just like a culmination of your work? You mentioned being a woman of faith, how does this all sort of come together?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Oh gosh. Yeah. I think it’s just me trying to be who I am, growing more into who I am and allowing, not compartmentalizing my life, and just trying to be fully me all the time. And so when we talk about inclusion, even when we talk about there’s a lot of conversation just around ethics and the initiative that we’re working on right now is around racial equity. And one thing that I find myself asking a lot is like, “Whose ethics are we talking about?” One and then two, I guess, what would it look like to put love at the center of design?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
There’s a lot of critique right now around design thinking and human center design. I think a lot of that, for me at least, kind of boils down to this prioritization of profit over real human needs and environmental needs, but what would it look like to really center love in our design process?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And a lot of talks about the ethics and equity, to me, it boils down to that and really unpacking what that is and then what that looks like for everyone and everything involved.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And yeah, that’s something, it’s a question I’m still exploring. I do not have it all figured out, but it is something that I feel like I’m pulling on more and it’s tugging at me more too.

Maurice Cherry:
Speaking of this kind of pull, you talked about, a little bit earlier, this new initiative that you’re working on and it’s something that’s new, separate from your work at Citi Ventures and separate from your teaching work at the University of Texas. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yes. So Nexar Creative, so it’s essentially a learning studio for world changing designers, and we’re really trying to reimagine design education by engaging current design professionals across the globe in these virtual arenas and our arenas are shaped around design skills, service design, strategic design, UX Research, many of which are increasingly in demand.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And then afterwards, those who complete the program will receive NFT certificate. That’s like a non fungible token that really signifies that you’ve done the work. And so our first arena is around the discipline of strategic design. So in other words, applying design in order to increase an organizations innovative and competitive qualities, especially when you’re thinking about systemic challenges, like a healthcare education, a climate change, and this year’s challenge theme was how might we reimagine maternal care for Black mothers and their families?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And for our inaugural cohort, we had nine Black women from across the globe like Tanzania and Nigeria, France, England, United States really kind of both learn a strategic design while trying to tackle and kind of approach this challenge in a very responsible and ethical and a compassionate way.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So that’s in a nutshell what we’re trying to do. It’s an eight week fully remote challenge, really trying to reimagine an online course, make it really engaging in that way. And yeah, super excited about it.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. At this point in your career, how do you define success?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Oh, man, I love this question because I’m often revisiting this question. I would say when I was younger, success was very much, “Okay, how much money am I making? Do I have this and that?.” Very material? And I think now I’m trying to measure success by my growth. And then also too, how much I am able to love and serve those around me?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
One of my favorite scriptures is that perfect love, cast out all fear. And so this year I’m trying to love, it won’t be perfect, but I’m just trying to love and serve as much as I can and be fearless in that, be really bold and fearless in loving people as I learn what love is to people.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
So for me, that’s what success is, kind of comparing myself to myself last year to this year. Am I growing in love? Am I growing as a person? Am I growing in the way that I’m able to serve other people? So I would say that’s how I’m defining success right now.

Maurice Cherry:
If you could sit down with your teenage self, you could sit down with the Underground Queen herself, what would you want to tell her?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Oh my goodness. I would tell her to put out her solo album.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
That’s the first thing I would say, “Put out the solo album. You got skills.” But secondly, I just, I know this is super corny, but just to really be yourself and I, oh my gosh. Every time I heard people say that I was like, “Ugh, can you give me something else?” But it really is true. I feel like I’m returning, even in the process of success and growth, a lot of that is returning kind of to myself. It’s a lot of unlearning.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And so, yeah, I would definitely say like, “Really be true to who you are. Don’t change for anyone or anything.” Well, change is necessary, but don’t change for negative reasons or what have you. Just try to be as authentic to you as you can be.

Maurice Cherry:
And to kind of flip it a bit, for people that are listening, what advice do you want to give them? If they’re listening to your story and they want to follow in your footsteps or they want kind of learn more about strategic design and stuff, what would you tell them?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
I am super open. If you want to ping me directly, I’m available on LinkedIn. I’m also on ADP list if anyone wants to chat that way. But yeah, also I would say just get a head start by kind of Googling up strategic design and also too, just find ways if you can, in your current work or in volunteer opportunities to integrate yourself or start thinking about those more generative questions, questioning in a productive way, the direction of the products or the experiences or the things that you’re working on. Just as an initial start to understanding that specific discipline.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What do you want the next chapter of your story to be?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Ooh, I would love ideally to be, well, one I, with the organization I’m a part of now with Citi Ventures, I’d love to help support the initiative that the Racial Equity Design and Data Initiative for that to really be impactful both to Citi itself, and then also externally.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Two, I would love it if I could really take what I’m trying to build with Nexar Creative and impact many different cohorts with my passion and mission to cultivate world changing designers.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
And then lastly, I’d love to be a mom. I’d love to just start building my own family and really leaning into that building of community around myself. So I would say that’s kind of where I’d see myself in five years.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. Well, just to wrap things up, where can our audience find out more information about you and about your work and everything online?

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Yeah. So I’d say the easiest thing to do is to go to my website, ravenveal.com and then that should link you to everything else, all my social media, an overview of the projects that I work on, all of that. So hit me up there and would love to chat.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds good. Well, Raven Veal, I’m going to thank you so, so much for coming on the show. One, I think, for just illustrating the work that you do. I can really tell that you have this kind of innate passion for it. And also with it coming at such an important time, I think just in human history. It’s super important to hear about design researchers and strategic design doing this kind of work.

Maurice Cherry:
But also just showing that this is a path that’s possible for someone to take. You had mentioned kind of before we recorded about people being able to kind of create and sort of recreate themselves. And I think what you’ve shown definitely throughout just telling your story is how you’ve been able to build yourself up to be the expert that you are today.

Maurice Cherry:
So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Raven L. Veal, PhD:
Thank you. Appreciate it.

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Monique Jenkins

It takes a lot of hard work and determination to be a successful entrepreneur, and sometimes, you can lose yourself in your path to success. But not Monique Jenkins! As the CEO of J.kins Creative, Monique bolsters the successes of Black and brown entrepreneurs by creating holistic brand identities with thought leaders who deserve to leave their mark upon the world. And she does it be being the best person for the job — herself!

Monique talked to me about what she started her own company, and talked about the varied processes she has to ensure clients receive top-class design work. She also spoke about growing up in Baltimore, how she juggles her studio with a full-time job (and a baby on the way!), and gave some insight on the type of legacy she wants to leave in the world. According to Monique, being an authentic version of yourself is a guarantee for living your best life!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right. So tell us who you are and what you do.

Monique Jenkins:
My name is Monique Jenkins and I am the CEO of a design agency called J.kins Creative, also a mentor and teacher at Towson University. And I run a non-for-profit called Ladies, Wine and Design Baltimore, which focuses on creating spaces for women and non-binary creatives and industry.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice. How has this year been going for you so far?

Monique Jenkins:
So far so good. Actually, it feels like we’ve lived the whole year in this first quarter going into the second quarter. I’m ready for 2023 already. The year didn’t start the greatest because I caught COVID in Jamaica. That’s when we initially talked, but it’s been getting better since then.

Maurice Cherry:
Is there anything in particular that you want to sort of accomplish this year?

Monique Jenkins:
I think my ideas of what was going to happen this year have kind of pivoted. I have since found out that I’m going to be a mama, so that’s-

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, congratulations.

Monique Jenkins:
Yeah. That’s going to be my major 2022 thing as far as personal life is concerned. But in my business, one of the things that I want to get better at doing is managing life and work. I am constantly doing speaking engagements and mentoring and doing all these other things. And the tone of this year for me was really putting down some of the extracurricular activities that I was doing and really honing in on my business. Because I would like within the next two to three years to kind of take that into a more full-time stance. So that’s really my focus for the year is gaining clients, understanding marketing better, understanding kind of the ebbs and flows of a couple of different things within my business and really honing on the type of clients I want to work with.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Let’s talk about your design studio, J.kins Creative. What was the impetus for you to start your own studio?

Monique Jenkins:
I have worked for a wide range of companies from smaller kind of startup companies and to larger fortune 500 companies. And I think in all of those respective statuses, it kind of taught me that people who look like us weren’t always represented regardless of which of those organizations I was working in. But then more specifically I had read so many articles about black women in particular starting their own businesses. And I was like, oh, I see all these wonderful women starting these great things, but I don’t see that the marketing and the branding is there for those companies. Or we don’t get to that point until we have probably launched this business two or three years down the line. And it’s important to me to help foster the information that I’ve learned in these respective environments in order to grow, to help people grow and sustain their business and figure out what their respective visions are and how that translates into a larger and more holistic idea of who their business is.

Maurice Cherry:
Walk me through just like a typical day. How do you sort of start out the day with J.kins Creative?

Monique Jenkins:
In a typical day, I am probably using the morning to reach out to existing clients. So if there’s something that I was supposed to finish up the previous day, I usually email them early and send over files for them to review or ask questions about things that seem a little sketchy or that we can’t exactly pinpoint right this second. As I’m moving throughout the day, I’m continuing to maintain those emails or phone calls from clients. Having kickoff meetings with potential new clients who are going to becoming on board. Asking them questions about what type of metrics and goals they want to hit for this project. Because generally when people start a design project, I like for them to start it from the process of like, what do you want to achieve by this? Design is pretty, but it’s also supposed to be functional in some capacity. So trying to understand their motivations for their business and get a little attune with what they’re doing is important to me.

Monique Jenkins:
And then after initial kickoff calls, we generally send out contracts and then we walk through those with our clients. If we’ve already done a kickoff call and we’ve already sent contracts before we kind of walk through that. And then the latter half of the day is used for actually getting work done. So designing respective assets for those clients and really just trying to putting those to the grind. And then usually by the end of the day, I connect with our front end developer who we’re just walking through what she’s done for the day and checking over websites and assets and things like that before we give those to our client.

Maurice Cherry:
So it sounds like you’ve kind of got the day pretty well structured out.

Monique Jenkins:
Yeah. Some days are easier than others. I mean, in design, nothing is certain. Some days it’s more client calls and that’s going to be the base of my day. Some days I don’t have any client calls and I can really dig in to the design work. Some days it’s more about trying to gain a better relationship with the engineer and dig into the code and understand why something isn’t working or interaction patterns aren’t working the way that we need them to. So, every day is a little bit different but every day is fun in some respects.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. What are the best types of clients for you to work with?

Monique Jenkins:
I would say clients who are a little bit more established in their business are better to work with because they kind of know that you’re the expert in the situation. I would say that any client that I have probably worked with who spent under 5,000 is someone who’s much more hands on. I think when you get to a specific level, you understand what your skillset is and you trust professionals to kind of do their work. So I love working with clients who are super enthusiastic about their business. I love working with people who have a strong vision for what they want and have metrics and goals that align to those visions. If someone comes to me and they aren’t sure about their budget, or they’re not sure about how this business is going to track or it’s relatively new, like everything is new. So they’re not really sure how this is all going to come together. People who have a sound idea of what their business is and what they’re trying to accomplish are incredibly fun to work with.

Maurice Cherry:
I remember back from when I had my studio, it was always the cheapest clients that were the worst one to work with just in terms of, they’re always on your back, they’re always asking about something. That’s not to say, well, maybe there is a correlation between low budget jobs and the amount of client and action that you get. But even as you said, with the higher price or the high ticket clients, sometimes they like to be hands on, maybe just in a different sort of way. But the interaction is different because like you said, they trust you as the expert. I’ve often found that if the client is trying to nickel and dime you, they don’t trust that you know what you’re doing. They don’t trust why it costs what it costs, et cetera. And with a more established business, they’ve hopefully already done this before and they know what the value is.

Monique Jenkins:
Yeah. The way that my business coach likes to explain it to me when she’s like, this is how you want to set up your price points. She’s like, “If you are going to do the work, then you’re going to charge a relatively okay price point.” So say a project is going to be $50,000. If they’re going to co-designed with you, that costs more money because it takes you more time. You’re doing more iterations. If they want to do a majority of the work, then you charge them the most amount of money because what you’re doing is acting as a production artist and that’s not a favorable place to be.

Monique Jenkins:
So I always tell client like, “We can have as many conversations as you want. I build into my contracts now that like three iterations and then we start to charge you after that.” It’s just about trying to understand where a person is in their business and what they believe about their business. And I find that people who have a little bit of a lower budget, not that they can’t be fun to work with. It’s just that they’re just a little bit more nitpicky. And I will say, I agree. Clients who have a higher budget are nitpicky, but it’s just in a different way. And I think that they trust you a little bit more. They probably have experiences working with other agencies and they know that you can bear fruit for them.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, that’s true. So when a company or an individual contacts you about a new project, like talk to me about that. What does that process look like in terms of onboarding, working with them throughout the project? Walk me through something like that.

Monique Jenkins:
Generally, what I ask people to do is to go to my website and fill out the new project form. It tells me some basic information about them, about like their name, address, or not address, email phone number, gives me a website URL if they have one existing, what type of project that says what the budget they have in mind is and what their deadline is. And then after I have that initial project form, I send them a project brief and that gets more into the specifics about metrics. So what exactly are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to do? What are your intentions? It just starts to, and I make our clients make smart goals. It just makes sure that they understand what the accomplishment is of this thing. We are not building designs because they’re pretty, we are building something that’s going to be functional for you.

Monique Jenkins:
So what’s the task that you want to do. Do you want more engagement on your site? Do you want more unique visitors? Do you want to promote a specific campaign or book or something? When I find that I make people start to think about why people are actually coming into their site we can help to define what should be the main CTA versus what are secondary actions that you want someone to commit. And once we go through that project brief and kind of distill that information down together, I tell them a bit more about myself, my background, help to bring in some of those validation points that clients want to know about you. I learn more about them. Hearing someone else’s story is crazy, interesting. Understanding why they started their business or what they’re trying to accomplish is super fun.

Monique Jenkins:
And then after we have that call, I send them over a contract, an invoice listed out with all of the things that they’re telling me they want to accomplish in the timeline that they’re saying they want to accomplish these things. So then we run through all of that information together. They understand what’s a part of the project. What’s not a part of the project. If we break timeline or add additional assets, what the price point is for those things. And then once they sign the contract, submit the deposit, we go off to the races.

Monique Jenkins:
So initial phone call, just like a kickoff call with the client. Give me whatever existing assets you have. Let’s talk about creative concepts. Let’s get all of those things nailed down and then we start getting the work on our end. I also might ask them depending on how clear they are with visual assets to create a Pinterest board of some websites that they love, that they want to incorporate into their own respective business as they see as a potential path to visually or stylistically how they want their website or assets to look. And then we use that as a starting post.

Maurice Cherry:
And just to be clear earlier, when you said smart goals, you mean the acronym SMART like specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time-bound.

Monique Jenkins:
Yes.

Maurice Cherry:
Got you. Okay. Just wanted to be clear about that. I know that when people probably heard that they’re thinking, yeah, I want my goals to be smart. But that it’s more than just that. It’s like a framework that you have to follow.

Monique Jenkins:
Yes. So specific might be like what needs to be accomplished? Who is responsible for it? What steps or actions need to be taken? Measurable kind of self explanatory, what is this going to accomplish? What are the numbers around it? Specific, like 15% of people that’s what I want to drive toward this specific thing. Achievable is like, it’s a reality check. Is this achievable in the timeline that you’re providing? Relevant is like, how does this compare in the bigger picture of things? And then time-bound is like, this is how much time that we have to actually complete these things. So whenever we create smart goals, I just think that it helps people to really hone in on what they’re asking me to do and to be incredibly realistic about what’s going to happen.

Maurice Cherry:
Got you. So let’s kind of switch gears here a little bit, so people can kind of learn more about the dynamic woman behind J.kins Creative. Tell me more about you. Tell me about where you grew up.

Monique Jenkins:
I am from Bridgeport, Connecticut originally. I moved to Maryland when I was 15. That sounds right. Yes. I couldn’t remember because I had just gotten into high school and my parents were like, “Come on girl, we’re moving to another state.” But originally from Connecticut. I went to a predominantly Hispanic speaking school for almost the entirety of my adolescences. And then when I came to Maryland, that was the first time I think I went to an all African American school. I had seen that many African American people in one place that’s different in Connecticut than it is here. So yeah, I will say when I was little in Connecticut, I had no idea I wanted to be a designer. I did not figure that out until I got well into college. So I always thought that I was going to be a lawyer because I’m so good at arguing with other people.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s talk about college. You mentioned that really knowing about kind of wanted to study design until you got there. You went to the Towson University and you still studied communications. Tell me about that experience.

Monique Jenkins:
Yeah. I had multiple majors and minors when I was at Towson University. I really did not… I had known for almost the majority of my life I was like a lawyer. I’m so competitive. I love arguing. I love to bring up points. I like to fact check those points. This is going to be it. And then when I got to college, I was like, well lawyers have… It’s a long time. I don’t know if that’s exactly the right path. I don’t know if I want to stay here that long. And I had really liked marketing too. This was at the time that Facebook was coming out so you were able to create your own visual graphics. And there was a lot of coding and stuff involved and different applications and social media applications that were coming out.

Monique Jenkins:
The computer was really big and I just assumed marketing and advertising was the way that I wanted to go. And I really did love marketing and advertising, but I think I love the visual components more than I liked all of the numbers behind it. So while I was in the middle of getting my communications degree, I was like, this is cool. I like this. I think I could do this forever, but I think I would like to take a more visual approach to marketing and advertising. I don’t know if I want to be in that world specifically, but I think that I want to be on the edge of it or work with those type of people. So I got my undergrad in Mass Communications with a concentration in advertisement, in marketing. And then I swapped over to the university of Baltimore a couple years later and got a degree in Graphic Design.

Maurice Cherry:
Now I want to kind of talk about that, because there’s a little bit of time that sort of happened between you leaving Towson University and then going to University of Baltimore. What was your early career after Towson? What was going on during that time?

Monique Jenkins:
I don’t remember exactly how this happened, but when I was at Towson, I got an opportunity to become an insurance agent. So I got my property and casualty license and I was working for Liberty Mutual as an intern, reaching out to customers who had inquired about auto insurance policies. And I hated it. I really didn’t, it wasn’t my thing. I did not like calling people and trying to force them into something that they didn’t want. I just liked cold calling people and being like, “Hey, have you thought about your auto insurance?” And people be like, “I’m at work girl. I don’t have time to talk to you about this.” So it really wasn’t my thing. But I worked for the insurance company and there were aspects of it that I loved.

Monique Jenkins:
But it was a really great experience because all of the agents who worked in our office wildly had what I would consider incredible degrees. One of them was a microbiologist, the other one had gotten a law degree, but ultimately they all decided, I want to do that and had gotten into insurance for one purpose or another. They liked the flexibility of the schedule and they had other outside ventures. So the microbiologist was also a real estate agent. We had a bunch of properties and that had me thinking like, I don’t want to waste this degree that I just got. Going into a field, that’s completely irrelevant. Let me figure this out. So after I kind of did insurance for a little bit, I transitioned over to finding a position that actually utilized my degree, which is, I was a publisher intern at AOL for about a year and a half or two years where I got to work with sales professionals, which was familiar because of the experience I had at Liberty Mutual and focused on advertising campaigns and online banners.

Monique Jenkins:
And it was my responsibility to put all of our bull websites for our advertisers into tiers. So different tiers of websites get different type of ads. So if you are… What’s a website that would be a D-tier. Any type of a TMZ, they’re probably a perfect example. TMZ would be a tier-D website. So you probably wouldn’t put Disney ads on that type of site. And then Disney is a tier A website. You probably could put a majority of the ads that you want to run on a type of site like that. So it was my responsibility to classify all of our new clients into respective tiers and then give them off to their marketing agents so that they could work more specifically with them. That was fun and I liked the coworkers. But again, I was just like, I like the looking at the websites. I like dissecting the websites. I like looking at the banner campaigns. I’ve been starting to develop a relationship with the designers who worked there.

Monique Jenkins:
So I was like, I missed something. I didn’t get what I needed to get in college and I need to go back to get the thing that I actually want. I think I had found out about the University of Baltimore’s program at the time and I was like, okay, I’m going to go back. I’m going to go back and get a Master’s degree in Design because I really like that. And I feel like that’s where my soul was telling me that I want to be. And again, I’ve been designing flyers and stuff for the church that I went to and birthday cards for friends and baby announcements and stuff like that.

Monique Jenkins:
And I was like, I think this is it. I just need a more formal education. I am certainly one of those people who’s like, I can’t watch YouTube videos to get it. I’m not that person. I need the structure of a classroom and a teacher being like, you have homework in order to pick up these concepts. And the weight is heavier for me. When I paid $5,000 to take a class, I’m like, girl, you going to class and you going to read this book and [inaudible 00:21:01] this stuff. When it’s a free video on YouTube, I’m like, I could watch five minutes of this and then I could go watch TV for three hours and then. So I needed the structure of that environment and the University of Baltimore at the time felt like the best fit for me.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. It’s interesting when you know that you’re paying for it, that you’ll sort of put more value in it because you’ve got skin in the game, essentially in that way.

Monique Jenkins:
That is exactly what I needed. I needed skin in the game in order to be like, okay, you have to take this seriously because college is not cheap. You spend a lot of money on this class and you will not be taking this class again because there were other people who were… It’s whatever. I don’t care if I have to take this again. I’m like I spend $5,000 on this class, so I’m not going to be taking it again. I got to pay another $5,000 for another class. You think I can take this class twice, no. I have to keep going. So once I had a little bit of skin in the game, then I was like, okay, Monique, you can sit down and you can focus so you can concentrate under this environment.

Maurice Cherry:
I think you also touched on something interesting there that you kind of had to get out there in the working world a little bit and discover through that, something that you didn’t want to do to bring you closer to the thing that you wanted to do.

Monique Jenkins:
Yeah. I don’t think that… I think that sometimes we’re sold this idea that after college it’s a clear path to working in the industry, but it’s hard. At Towson University hadn’t done any internships that were specific to my field and I think that should be a requirement for college. If you were spending all this time and money on a degree, you should at least have to take two or three internships specifically in the field that you want to work in. Because it’ll help you to be like, you know what? This is not truly what I wanted, once I got into the environment. But once I started working at AOL, I was like, this is fun, this is wonderful. It’s a great company. There are great coworkers. There are fun things in the office like skateboards and there are free snacks, but I’m like, something is still missing. I’m still not getting exactly what I need. So I need to think about this and change paths a little bit. So that’s what worked for me at least.

Maurice Cherry:
Now what were those kind of early days of Jenkins creatives like for you because you’re running your studio, but you were also working full time at a few companies, right?

Monique Jenkins:
Yeah. I remember feeling like I don’t even know what, I don’t even know. I didn’t even know the right questions to ask. I didn’t know the right people to talk to. I’m much more into networking now and facilitating relationships with other people. But at the time I was very much an introvert and I was like, I don’t want to talk to nobody. I don’t want nobody to talk to me. I just want to figure this out on my own. And I think that’s a very hard stance to have. So it was lonely and I wasn’t exactly sure what I should be doing. I was taking maybe some classes on how to run a business. But I never really felt like any of the curriculum that I was participating in, gave me a full grasp of what was necessary in order to run a business and time gave me that. It let me know what worked and what didn’t work, where I should invest my resources, where I shouldn’t.

Monique Jenkins:
But also in addition to time, physically meeting people out in the world and understanding how they ran their businesses and understanding what worked or didn’t work for them or avenues that I could potentially go down our path, that was what was most helpful for me. Because I feel like all of the people that I worked with since the time of Liberty Mutual had some type of outside or source of revenue or income and had always put it in my head that, you can’t just have a nine to five, you got to be able to do something else beyond that. What happens if you get fired tomorrow? Can you still pay your bills? Where are your additional revenue streams? And that really stuck with me about being like, okay, you work for a company who sometimes has to make a hard decision and they’re not going to say, Monique has to pay her grant. So we shouldn’t let her go. They’re going to make the decision that’s best for their organization and you have to have something to fall back on. You can’t just be out there with nothing to do. And that started to help me be like, okay, I need to figure out how this businesses run.

Monique Jenkins:
So in the beginning it was a mess. I’m not going to lie. There was no website, there was nothing. It was just me randomly reaching out to people or meeting people. I have 17 different business cards. I would be redesigning those things on the weekly basis. I’d be like, this isn’t good enough. No one’s[inaudible 00:25:32]. Aside from me like this and all of that stuff it just didn’t work in the way that I thought it was supposed to work. So it was a little bit of ebb and flow. Some things were useful and helpful for me, some things not so much. But just understanding how larger organizations worked, helped me to hone in on how I wanted to run my business and what was acceptable and not acceptable for the type of clients I work with or the type of environment I wanted to work in.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I feel like with studios like that, especially when you’re just starting it off by yourself, you really have to try to… You’re kind of doing a lot of trial and error to figure things out on your own. And for you, it was good that you also had a full-time job kind of to back things up while you were figuring out the ins and outs of the studio. So that’s a good thing.

Monique Jenkins:
Yeah. A funny story is that I made an Instagram called Trial and Error where I would… I was testing out different design methodology and things like that. And it was a way to hold myself accountable and be like, you should be designing something, you should be building your skillset. And I think I did that for a couple months and then I was like, Monique, this is so much work. But it was really just a place where I could be like, if I put my designs out there in the world, people will see them. They’ll be interested and they’ll potentially come to you as clients. That did not happen. I don’t think I got one client from that venture, but it helped me to be like, okay, how do you build your skillset to get you to a place where you can make all of these very beautiful and extravagant thing.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look back at your work years, prior to starting your studio, what lessons do you take from that time?

Monique Jenkins:
I think the biggest lesson that I probably could take from that is that people are so kind in so many ways… When I look back at my career, I think about all of the awesome women specifically, black women and more specifically, who just had my back. Who just took me aside and gave me knowledge and information that I just did not have and could not fathom in a lot of different respects. And even when I was going to make very wild errors or I was acting emotional in the things that I was going to be doing, black women saved me every single time. They helped me to steer my direction and navigate and make better decisions because I was working at a check burning company and I dislike these I was like, this is ridiculous. I don’t want to do this. And I wrote what is the nastiest probably resignation letter that anybody has ever read. This is stupid. Y’all are stupid. It just wasn’t kind.

Monique Jenkins:
I was friends with the HR, director and she was like, show me your resignation letter. And we looked at it together and she ripped it up right in front of me. She was like, “You will not be giving this to anybody.” And I was like, “What?” She was like, “When you work for a company, you don’t want to burn bridges. These people that you think are not confident or don’t know how to do their jobs, you will face these people again in other environments. So you don’t do that. You don’t burn bridges in that way. You can respectfully say that you did not have a good time here or you can keep your mouth shut. And you could say this was a great learning experience, which it was, it taught you that you did not want to work with these type of people and you take that on.”

Monique Jenkins:
And 10 years later I got an opportunity to work with one of the same people that I worked with in that organization, loved her. She was great. Once we worked one on one, but working as the low person on the totem pole in that context, when I was really young, I was like, these people are… I don’t like this. This ain’t going to work for me. But her pulling me aside and having that conversation about not burning bridges was incredibly a shaping moment. And every single organization that I have worked out since I have been able to find that person who is more knowledgeable than me, who can help me navigate spaces in ways that I did not think about or think about things in ways that I just don’t inherently have in me.

Monique Jenkins:
So those people incredibly wonderful. They help shape me. And then I guess the other thing that I’ve taken away from a lot of the organizations is the structure that I like and don’t like working in, is super important. So, some of the bigger companies that I worked for I really felt like a number. I was like, these people don’t know me. They don’t really know anything about me. And I started to find my sweet spot and being like, I don’t know if I want to work for a fortune 500 company. Maybe I want to work for smaller companies or a mid-tier company where there feels to be a little bit more of a, and I use this loosely, family structure around who you are with. Because I always think it’s a red flag when someone’s like, “We’re family.” I’m like, “No we not, we’re coworkers y’all.”

Maurice Cherry:
Same. A 100% same.

Monique Jenkins:
I’m like, we’re not we just like each other outside of work. That’s different. I have to stick with my family forever sometimes. But it really helped me to figure out like, I don’t like being one of 75 designers on a team. I want to be in a smaller team where I actually get to know these people and understand their perspectives or know the other team members that I’m working with outside of the core team. And well I have never go back to working with a fortune 500 company. It depends on the salary offer. But for, right this second, like I think the sweet spot is really a smaller company where you get to know actual people and then they get to, they open up and they share things with you that I don’t think they necessarily share in a larger structure with more people working at an organization. I find that people more reserved in that setting.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I’ve worked in startups for the past, I’d say roughly the past five years. And I don’t know if anyone from my current job is listening to this so I won’t say what I feel about startups. But I think it’s important, like you say, to have those different work experiences to know what you like, what you don’t like, because once you start getting out there and I’d say, this is probably the case, even for starting your own studio and finding clients and stuff.

Monique Jenkins:
Yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
At the beginning, you’ll kind of just take any work. Any work that’s coming in the door, as long as it’s paying, but then eventually you learn what are the best types of clients for you to work with? What are the best kind of jobs? What’s the client match for that will allow you to do your best work? That takes trial and error.

Monique Jenkins:
Exactly. I always tell people that I’m mentoring specifically, because I’m been mentoring with Thinkful for new UX and UI designers that are coming out of their program. And I always tell them, “It depends on what you want to gain. So, if you’re going to work for a startup, generally, you’re the only designer there. You’re going to do everything. You are going to have to do research on your own time. You’re going to be digging into a bunch of different worlds. You’re going to be learning a bunch of different things.”

Monique Jenkins:
If you are like, I want the guardrails of working with other people in a structured environment that has a design system that is already established work for a bigger company, get that under your feet. You’re never going to put a million dollar campaign or something out the door without any oversight. There will be guardrails there to help to protect you. And then once you understand what the structure is like, then you can transition to a mid-year company or to a startup and feel more confident. But originally coming out of college, it was probably helpful to me to work in an environment that had very rivet you know what I mean?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Monique Jenkins:
Yeah, so, because there was a design guide and I could look at that for reference when I building something and feel more confident about the thing that I was going to produce or that I was showing and at a manager. I could go to that person and be like, “Hey, what do you think about this?” The first startup that I worked at, there was no design director. I was the only person. I was on the marketing team and they are wonderful, but they’re not designers. So they couldn’t really give me feedback. They were more so telling me, I like this or I don’t like this.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Monique Jenkins:
But that’s not logical. They’re telling me what their preferences are, not who our core customer is and how this design can relate to them.

Maurice Cherry:
Well said a 100%. Are there certain types of projects that you want to do in the future?

Monique Jenkins:
Yes. Recently in my business have been picking up a lot of clients in the solar energy space, which is super interesting. So I like that client. I like helping, or I like thinking that my work is going to help in a bigger way or have a bigger impact than outside of a redesign. This is for someone actually coming to gain knowledge. And I also think it’s a environment that I don’t think as a black person that I read enough about or know enough about, like be informational. So I like the solar energy clients. I like startups specifically. I want to help craft and create brands from the beginning and help them to discover who they are and create an entire branded existence for an organization. That seems like a super fun and challenging thing for me. I like the challenges is what it is.

Maurice Cherry:
Speaking of challenges, in a way you’ve kind of come full circle. You mentioned attending Towson University several years ago. Now you’re a teacher at Towson University. Talk to me about that.

Monique Jenkins:
That actually happened because when I was at the University of Baltimore, I graduated with a master’s degree and I went back to college, again, for a third time to get a certificate in User Experience and Interaction Design. And I got that and I was like, you know what, as I think back across the entirety of my experience in college, I don’t think I’ve ever had a black professor. I was like, I don’t remember that ever being a part of my college curriculum. And I talked to a couple friends too, and I was like, “Have you ever had a black professor? I’ve never. Have you?” And they were like, “Now that I think about it, I don’t think I had.” After I went to college for the third time, I was considering going back again to get a doctorate. And I can’t remember what podcast I was listening to, but I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about validation as a black woman in spaces.

Monique Jenkins:
And I had reached out to the University of Baltimore and I had talked to the recruiting counselor there and she reached back out and she was like, “Hey, we’re having open house or something and I want to make sure you can make it.” And I just got real honest with her in a way that I don’t think that I am with some people sometimes. I think I’m better at it now, but at the time I really wasn’t. And I sent her an email that said like, “In all honesty, as a black woman, I think I’ve used my education as validation that my opinion belongs in the room and it validates that I’m worth listening to, to those people. And I’m trying to redevelop how I see myself and how other people should see me in the spaces that I’m in. I don’t think I need the validation of another degree in order to get that. So I don’t think I’m going to go on and get my doctorate right now. I think I’m just going to focus on me.”

Monique Jenkins:
And this was at the time that I was just starting with Ladies, Wine & Design, Baltimore. I had just off boarded from AIGA, Baltimore. And I was just like, I don’t want to do that. But I also was like, I don’t want another person to go through their college experience and not have a minority be a part of that. Not have a person who looks like me or not see another woman who looks like me go through their education experience and not experience that with some of the joy that it is to have a professor who is African American in our space. So I want to teach. I want to show people that it’s possible. I want people to see me and be like, “Oh, I can do that one day.” And understand the path of what it takes to get there. And that’s how I started teaching. Is that I thought about my own college curriculum and what would’ve made that situation better for me and I was like, I’m going to go and teach.

Maurice Cherry:
What do your students teach you?

Monique Jenkins:
So much. All the new latest TikTok trends. I’ll tell you that. I cannot get away. I’m like, “Y’all, I don’t get it. I’m a mom now. I don’t understand how you’re supposed to use this thing.” I think what they teach me is that failure is okay. I took college incredibly seriously. When we were talking earlier, college was very much a job. I came from a family who financially could not afford for me to go to college. I took out a lot of student loans to get this degree. So college was always very heavy for me. And it was always like, you need to be doing your best self and you need to be doing your best self because your family is counting on you. You don’t have the option of being lazy. You don’t have the option of not doing your best. You have to put everything in this because it’s a lot of money to waste.

Monique Jenkins:
So when I see them and they’re interacting with me and they’re interacting with the work that I’m giving them, it’s okay for me to be able to tell them like, “Hey, this is not make or break. This is okay If you’re not going to do your best on this one project or that you’re having a hard in life, sympathizing.” And I think they helped to bring back some of that humanity to me in some respects where I’m like, it’s okay to be like, I don’t get this or this isn’t exactly where I know I want to be. Or I don’t really understand these things that are concepts that you’re explaining. They just help to ground me in a way that I don’t think that I was ever grounded when I was in college. They give me a little bit of… And they’re super honest too when they don’t like stuff.

Monique Jenkins:
They provide a little bit of lightness to the world and they see things in a… They’re growing up in such a different time than what I think I grew up in, which is weird because I don’t feel like I’m that old, but apparently I’m getting there. They have such a different perspective on life. I always say, “You guys are considering and are interacting with concepts and things that I don’t think I ever thought of in the entirety of the time that I was in college. And you’re introduced to things in such a early way that I don’t think that I ever explored when I was your age.”

Monique Jenkins:
So they helped to shape a large part of my world. Also, they helped me to realize what’s important and what’s not important in some respects. They give me lots of love and lightness and sometimes drive me crazy. I try to not be the Monique who’s a production person who’s just working all the time, but I’m also like, you don’t have time to be messing up. You’re in college. So they help to ground me in a way that I don’t think that I was at their age.

Maurice Cherry:
Have you had any peers or mentors that have kind of helped you out along your design journey? I feel like you alluded to one of them earlier. But I’m curious, who’s helped you to get to where you are today?

Monique Jenkins:
As I said, so many women whose names that I will not remember, probably have no idea that they had such an influence on me. More recently though, for Ladies, Wine and Design, my co-host or co-partner in that venture is Davia Lilly. And she has helped me to work smarter and not harder and to explore concepts that I just have never explored in design. She is a huge part of helping me to be the best Monique that I can be. I also recently hired two different business coaches, who I’ve worked with recently, Jessica Langley and Michelle Gomez, who both have been incredibly influential in helping me realize my potential and all of the amazing things that I can do. Dan Brown, who’s an information architect and principal designer at his company called EightShapes, who has a user experience consultancy has been incredibly helpful. They all have been helpful in so many different ways in helping me to shape who I am, where I’m going, how I want to run my business or how I don’t. Yeah. They are amazing people, every single one of them and teach me amazing things every day.

Maurice Cherry:
Is this how you kind of imagined your life would look like when you were a kid?

Monique Jenkins:
Absolutely not. It is not. I was one of those kids who journaled. So I have a journal with all of the stuff that I wanted to accomplish. I remember being when I turn 18 and go to college, I want to go to NYU and I want to live in New York. And I was just imagining a Sex in the City lifestyle where everything was fabulous or moving out to LA. And I never wanted to be an actor or an actress. That is not my God-given gift. But being in those environments with those type of people. And I think I’ve accomplished all of the things that young Monique thought that she was going to accomplish. I purchased a house. I finally got my puppy. I’m about to start a family with my husband. And I just didn’t think it was going to happen in this way. And I’m still working towards the dream of being in New York or Los Angeles.

Monique Jenkins:
I don’t know if those are dreams anymore because I’ve been to LA and I was like, “This is congested y’all.” I’ve been to New York and also been like, “This is all right, but I don’t know about this for a full-time basis.” I could get a summer home there or something. But it all worked out the way that I wanted it to. When I was young, I thought more materialistic. I wanted things. Now that I’m older, I’m like, I’m happy with my life. I’m happy with my spouse, with my family, with the interactions that we have with each other. I’m happy that I can pick up the phone right now and call my mama and be like, “Hey girl, we just got a contract for a $100,000,” and have her pray for me and love on me and have such good spirits. That’s the more important thing.

Monique Jenkins:
I think when I was younger, I was like, I’m going to move away from my family. I’m never going to talk to them. What do I need to talk to them for? But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve appreciated where I am now and appreciate all the things that I want to do. And every single time a major life event happens, I go back to my diary from 12 years old and I’d be like, let me add something to this because I wasn’t fully thinking about these things. But by and large, I’ve gotten to check off a lot of the things that I thought that I was going to do when I was younger. And that is good for my soul because I’m like, at least you weren’t dreaming. At least you can reference back to the dreams you had. You can check these things off, you were able to accomplish them.

Maurice Cherry:
I think that’s been one of the great things for me about sort of getting older and then being able to kind of look back at the life that you’ve worked hard to create. Looking back at what you’ve built and kind of being content with it. And that’s not to say that you’re settling for it, because I’m sure you have other goals and aspirations that you want to do. And I’ll ask you about that. But also looking and seeing where you are right now and being like, I did pretty good. That’s a blessing to get to that point.

Monique Jenkins:
Pair it with some pivotal moments. I think the first $100,000 job that I got was like, oh, that’s crazy. Nobody in your family has ever even thought of making this much money. And now that I reflect on that, I’m like, “Girl, you better get to two million dollar, three million dollar. You can get some more money than that.” But as a kid, that number seemed so big. That just felt like an incredible task. As an adult, I’m like, well girl, a bread be costing like five dollars. But as a child, it’s weird to get to this point. And it’s weird for your family members.

Monique Jenkins:
I will say by and large out of my siblings and my cousins and all that stuff, my mom was like,” Monique’s going to be the one. It’s just in her personality.” She even says, “When you were a baby, you didn’t even want nobody to hold your bottle. You was like, I could do this myself. I don’t need you for that.” And I’ve carried that theme through. She was like, “You have always been so self reliant. And so you set your own accomplishments.” She was like, “You put yourself on punishment when you were 10 years old because you got a B on a paper and you felt embarrassed” She was like, “It was so crazy. You took your TV out of your room and everything.”

Monique Jenkins:
And I was like, “Because I knew that I just had so much more in me and I wasn’t giving it my all.” And I feel like I do that now. I’m incredibly hard on myself, but I think that the good thing about living in the space that we are now is that I can see other black women who are like I was too. And I had to learn to balance. Being productive with sustaining a life and having a happy balance between those two. So its nice to look back and be like, all right. I know you wanted to be a lawyer who was also a doctor who was also a mechanic who was also this, but you got to this place and you are still happy. You don’t have to be productive 365 days a year. You can take some days to just chill and eat Oreos on the couch, watching Netflix and you’re okay.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. It’s really something, like you said, to get to that point and realize, there’s more to life than just work. That whole thing about striking a work life balance, especially when you’re an entrepreneur is super tough. I know when I started out with my studio initially, I was working or I would tell people the joke about entrepreneurs can work half days, any 12 hours you want because I would just keep working because no one was there to stop me. There was nothing to stop me. I just keep going. And eventually you learn, if you don’t take the break, your body will take it for you.

Monique Jenkins:
Exactly.

Maurice Cherry:
And so eventually like I learned to of not put so much of that value on to know when to take breaks and all that sort of stuff. But being able to look back on the work that you’ve done and feel satisfied and grateful, it’s such a great place to be as an entrepreneur. Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What do you want your next chapter to be?

Monique Jenkins:
I have no idea now. I was not intending to be a mom this year. So I feel like my next four or five years will be incredibly important for the development of my child. And I’m super interested in making a bunch of Instagram videos that other moms can relate to. I think that’s where my heart is right this second. Obviously, my business is incredibly important to me because I think there is a purpose behind it. The intention behind my business is personal to me because I’m one of the women who my businesses services in some respects. So I want to grow my business over the course of the next three years. I would love to get it to a place where it’s same things or has the ability to pay my mortgage for my household and all that jazz because I think it’s important. But also I don’t want to be a mom who can’t spend all the time that they can with their children. I’m sure there will become a point in that child’s life where I’ll be like, “A break is good. You going to daycare soon or something.”

Monique Jenkins:
But I think out of the gate, at least the first four or five years of your kid’s life, is incredibly important to me to be present and to be there for all of those little moments and to understand how’re they are growing up and what their personality is and their expression. So dually for me, it’s crafting a business that sustains itself outside of me physically having to watch over it, hiring more employees who can service the business and letting go of the reigns in some respects, because when you’re a business owner you want to be a part of everything.

Monique Jenkins:
And I will say that because I said, when you have a lower budget, you want to be a part of everything. I’m the same way you all. I’m just there. And it’s okay to release the reigns to another person and trust them with some aspects of what you are building because they do have your back and they are building towards the same goals and things that you want to build towards. So building my business is equal to helping facilitate a relationship with my child and obviously a relationship with my husband. My whole purpose for my business is to help my family. It’s incredibly important for me to build a life where I can assist in whatever ways are helpful to the people and members of my family who have served me and continue to do so.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to kind to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you and about your work and everything online?

Monique Jenkins:
You can go to my website, jkinscreative.com. That is also the handle for my Facebook and Instagram, is J.Kins Creative. I’m also going to be a keynote speaker on April 30th at AIGA Baltimore’s Ink & Pixels event. So I’ll be talking about being prepared to get your dream job or leave your dream job depending on what you want to do. So those are the places where I’m going to be most present over the course of the next couple months.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds good. Well, Monique Jenkins, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I have to say, your passion for your business and your enthusiasm for the work that you do just really, really shines through. And I’m so grateful that we’re able to connect. Again, congratulations on the baby. I’m really excited to see what you do in the future. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Monique Jenkins:
Thank you for having me. I’m also excited to see what I’m going to do in the future. In this future, I’m going to go get something to eat, because that’s the top priority on my mind right this second. But after that, I’m going to take over the world. I’m super excited to see all of my dreams realized and expectations grow over…what is this next phase of my life?

Russell Toynes

If Austin, Texas had a contest for “Hometown Design Hero”, I think Russell Toynes would definitely win the grand prize! Russell is the founder and creative director of Studio Dzo, a multidisciplinary design-build studio that works with developers, architects, interior designers, and other business owners to elevate their work and help bring it to life. On top of that, he’s also an adjunct professor covering portfolio development at Austin Community College, and is a core team member of African American Graphic Designers, the largest collective of African-American and Black visual communicators. Talk about being active in your community!

Russell talked about rebounding and rebuilding during the pandemic, sharing how his team adjusted and how he changed his business focus to keep productivity high and focus on his employees’ mental health. He also spoke on growing up in Austin, working as an art director at Dell, and his love for giving back and helping the next generation of designers. Russell is living proof that you can find success and fulfillment right in your own backyard!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right, so tell us who you are and what you do.

Russell Toynes:
My name is Russell Toynes, and I am the creative director and owner at Studio Dzo. I’m also a design educator. I teach portfolio design at Austin Community College. And I am a core member of AAGD, which is African American Graphic Designers. And I’m a mentor to a lot of either previous students or folks that wish they were a student of mine.

Maurice Cherry:
Nice.

Russell Toynes:
I’m also a dad and a husband, but those things, those are all day, every day. And those are some of the best things that I do. We’ll see. We should ask them.

Maurice Cherry:
How’s 2022 been going so far?

Russell Toynes:
2022 has been good. We’re actually really excited. 2021 was a banner year for us, and 2022 is exactly the same. Our books are full, and the work just keeps coming in, and we have a good team. We had a little bit of an upset in 2021 where we had some folks get, what’s that bug that they caught? The great resignation?

Maurice Cherry:
Oh.

Russell Toynes:
Some of them got some of that, you know? And so that left us in a little bit of a bind. So we had two new team members start in January, and so we’re still training them. So it’s a little challenging with that, with some new team members, but 2022 is starting out great for us.

Maurice Cherry:
Is there anything in particular that you really want to try to accomplish this year?

Russell Toynes:
Really, we have a good processes, but I always want to get right and tight, right? So I really, really am looking at how do we streamline our business? My goal… Well, with the pandemic, we’re really… Before pandemic, we had a studio on East Sixth Street and it was great. We were there for three or four years, and we just moved into a new place. We did a $10,000 build out. We moved into a new place on South Lamar on February 17th on 2020. And then March 17th, 2020, we said everybody, “Hey, so this thing’s going on. We’re going to send you home. You’re going to work from home and we’ll check in every week or two, and we’ll figure out when we’re going to come back.” We were really naive, right? We just didn’t know. And I was scared. And we have a little blog on our website.

Russell Toynes:
And so, I just wrote a blog of just like a cathartic, being a small business owner during a pandemic is fucking scary. And so, I wrote this blog post just talking about like my biggest thing was just thinking about, not only do I have to keep food on my table, but I got to keep food on five other people’s tables also. And so, not knowing what that was going to look like was really scary.

Russell Toynes:
But what I realized was when we were in the studio, we were really locally focused. We did some state, some things outside of Austin. Lots of things outside of Austin, but lots of things in other states, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, and Arizona, and places like that. But we were really just thinking, “Oh, we’re Austin, we’re Texas.”

Russell Toynes:
When we went remote, all of a sudden opportunities just started just coming in different directions. And now, we really see ourselves as global. We have done work in Singapore, we have done work all over the United States. We have partners all over the world. So really, thinking about… we just wrapped up a project in Canada… just thinking about what we have done in the last year, it’s amazing that when we opened our minds up to thinking beyond our local borders, what we’ve accomplished.

Russell Toynes:
And so, really 2022 is just about, how do we keep this momentum? How do we move forward and continue to have a global presence?

Maurice Cherry:
That’s really good to hear. I mean, the pandemic, it’s changed business for so many people. I mean, I’ve talked to several studio owners, big and small, that have all had to really adjust because they weren’t able to come together physically in an office like they did before. I mean, for the team, was it a big shift to make that change?

Russell Toynes:
Yes. So, we have team members of various ages. So we have seven team members. Seven in total. So me and my wife, and then we have five other team members. And they’re all employees of ours, but we call them team members because I don’t like the idea of people being an employee.

Russell Toynes:
So they’re all in different places in life. Some have families, some are single, some have partners. And so obviously, the pandemic hit everybody. So if you’re a family person and you have a spouse at home and children, they’re all affected. And so, that changed a lot for our team member in particular who has kids. It’s just, how do you work when his escape was getting in the car, driving to the studio, spending six to eight hours there and driving back, and having that decompression time and that transitional period?

Russell Toynes:
And now it’s get up, feed, clothe, put them in front of whatever Zoom classes they have, then get in front of his work Zoom and do work. And then their kids, they’re various ages. And so, that was the biggest challenge. Our big thing was, we wanted to focus on their mental health. We wanted to make sure that they had the freedom to take whatever time they needed just to process what the hell was going on. Because for all of us, we just didn’t know. It was scary.

Russell Toynes:
Especially in the very beginning when we just didn’t know what it was, but people were getting sick and people were dying. As time went on, the adaptations change. It went from, “Okay, let me just figure out just how to keep people, my team healthy and somewhat productive,” to this, “Okay, we can’t talk about going back. We got to talk about moving forward.”

Russell Toynes:
And so, it was like, “What do you need to be effective? What do you need to be efficient?” So, the team came back to the studio, we gave them their desk, their sit-stand desk. Then we got everybody… Our designers have desktops. Actually, almost everybody had desktops. And so, we were like, “Look, we can’t say you work remote, but then basically chain you to a desk.” So we got everybody all new laptops, and we were like, “Look, we don’t know what this is going to look like, but you have the freedom to work from wherever you’re at. So if you want to travel somewhere, you can work from there. As long as you’re able to be productive, work however you want to.”

Russell Toynes:
And so, for us, we really just had to figure out what was going to work now that we were in the long haul for this. So really it was just changing our work model. So changing it from in the studio to being remote. But then also from a clock in, clock out like you had in the studio where people come in and they’re expected to be in at 9:00, expect to stay till 5:00, and you had a good culture there. Where now it’s like, “We have to go to dentists, we have to get our car inspected. We have to do all the things while being at home.”

Russell Toynes:
So we switched to this get it done model, where it’s like, you know what you need to do. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, first thing in the morning, we talk about what we need to do and then you just go do it, however you’re going to get it done. So if you want to take out in the middle of the day to hang out with the kids, cool. You know what needs to be done when it needs to be done. I don’t need to babysit you.

Russell Toynes:
And so that’s worked out really, really well, both for my wife and I, Elizabeth, because sometimes we’re just not feeling like sitting in front of a desk. And so, we can sit with our laptop. And plus, we can do a lot of our work via our phone if we’re just calling or setting up meetings or reviewing work. So for us, this whole get it done model has really helped us all tackle life’s responsibilities along with work responsibilities.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, it sounds like you and the team are really able to make a agile shift pretty quickly. Do you think that was just because of your tight-knit nature of the team? What do you really attribute to that?

Russell Toynes:
I was a creative… Oh sorry, I was art director at Dell for five and a half years, and I learned quite a bit of what to do and what not to do. And so, very, very quickly I knew that I wanted everything that we did to be cloud based. And so, I didn’t want the opportunity for someone to have anything on their local drive that we needed, or for a laptop to get stolen and work that I had paid for over months for them to do got lost.

Russell Toynes:
So we were already very equipped to work remotely, because everything was already backed up to the cloud constantly through Google File Stream. And we had been using all the Google suites. So everything from the calendars, to email, to everything. So we were already well-equipped to just work from devices, whether that be iPads, phones, or computers, or something like that.

Russell Toynes:
I think being that we’re a small team and it was seven of us, I think that allowed us to be nimble. And we’ve always prided ourselves on being nimble and being able to fail quickly. So we’ll try something. If it doesn’t work, let’s adapt. But honestly, I attribute it to having just a damn good team who really has a lot of faith in Elizabeth and I to just guide them. And they’ll follow us in whatever direction we ask them to.

Russell Toynes:
And we have an open-door policy. We ask people, there’s no hierarchy other than the fact that I’m responsible for making sure they get paid and everything. Everyone has the opportunity to make a suggestion. Everybody has the opportunity to talk to me or Elizabeth and say, “Hey, this isn’t working, or this could be better, or I ain’t dealing with something.”

Russell Toynes:
And unfortunately, during the pandemic, things happen. People die. Maybe it’s pandemic related, maybe it’s not. And we have to be adaptive to that. And so, we can’t just sit there and go, “Well, we’re running a business here, sorry.” It’s like, “No, we’ll figure it out. We’ll make it work.” And we just have a killer team that just everybody has everybody’s back. So it really has helped us move, and shift, and be nimble during this time of uncertainty.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you talked about going from being more locally focused with your client base to now having this global reach. What are the best types of clients for you to work with?

Russell Toynes:
So we work with architects, interior designers, and developers, and business owners. We work with everybody, but those are the best. Our ideal client… We don’t call our clients, clients. We call them partners, because this is a partnership. We have to work together. I don’t work for anybody. And so, we are working together to meet a goal and to create an experience. And so for us, we love working with interior designers because, A, they know the budget, and they’re realistic.

Russell Toynes:
They’re not developers who have a stake in how much money the project makes. And they’re not designers who are like, “Oh, I think I know how to design a sign or an installation,” and they have no idea. So when we work with… And architects are good, but architects always hire interior designers, and interior designers love us and we love them. So, they have a vision. We bring their visions either to life, or we just… They say, “This is an area that we don’t know what to do, but that’s where we call you.”

Russell Toynes:
And so, interior designers are great. So we work with lots of different agencies that have wonderful, talented interior designers who rely on us to do what we do well. And the crazy thing is, is maybe it’s the same in design, I don’t know, but there’s a lot of turnover. I don’t know if it’s just like, they go to a place, they’re there for a year. And then they want to just go to somewhere else or they move or whatever.

Russell Toynes:
So like pollinating, we make great relationships with one studio and then five of their interior designers over the course of a year or two go to five different other places. And then those five other places call us too. And next thing you know, we got 15, 20 interior design agencies all around the United States and whatnot that are calling us for project after project. So, I love them.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I like that spread effect like that. I mean, I think you mentioned the great resignation a couple of times now. It’s interesting how because the pandemic has forced a lot of people to now work from home or work from remote locations, that a lot of companies before are just having to open themselves up to talent from a lot of other places.

Maurice Cherry:
And so, I think that can be both good and bad. Of course, for the company, I could see the downside of it because now that they’re working with employees from other states, they’ve got to think about, “Well, can we legally hire people in this state and what does that mean?”

Russell Toynes:
Exactly. That’s my wife. We had a team member in Atlanta, and she jumped through so many hoops with the comptroller there in Atlanta to just get this person to where we can offer them insurance and everything else. Yeah, it’s a huge undertaking when you bring on somebody outside of your state, and it’s a new state that you haven’t been in already.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And then for the worker, it can be easy because now so many gigs that before were just landlocked to a certain city, now you can work from everywhere. I’ve been working, personally I’ve been working remotely since 2009. And like you, when I had… I had a studio for nine years, from 2009 to 2017. And we did some work locally. We did a lot of national work, some international work. But I’d say for the past two years now, on and off for the past two years, I’ve mostly been working internationally. It’s worked out that I can now take my skills and I can work in Amsterdam. I can work in Paris, which is where my current job is headquartered at.

Russell Toynes:
So how do you deal with the time difference?

Maurice Cherry:
Not well.

Russell Toynes:
I was going to say. I went to Hawaii. I went to Hawaii in January and I didn’t think that was going to mess me up. But boy, did it.

Maurice Cherry:
Not well. I mean, so when I worked for the company in Amsterdam, I think it was a six hour time difference, five to six hour time difference. Because you know, daylight savings time eventually creeps in. But it was rough because by the time I’d start in the morning, it would be in the afternoon there. There would be some times I would have to be up at 4:00 AM for a meeting. And thank God they were not anal about having the camera on with anything. So I could just be halfway in bed on Zoom, like, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” For the current job, it’s not that bad because we’re split. Where my time zone is, eastern time zone is sort of split between where the company is. So we’re between San Francisco and Paris.

Maurice Cherry:
So in the morning I work with the Europeans. My boss is in London. And then in the afternoon I’m working with more of the creative team that’s here in the US that are in California. So my day is split in that way. We do a lot, a lot of async communication just to pass the baton back and forth. But it can be brutal sometimes. Sometimes I am working a 12-hour day from 5:00 to 5:00. Sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes it happens, and it’s a lot.

Russell Toynes:
That’s our goal. That’s our goal is… My wife and I, I have a 20-year-old daughter, and so she’s very much into living her own life. That’s something I’ve been trying to adjust to. But we have aspirations to basically be digital nomads. And really set up our team to where we can… We have aspirations to make either a home or a temporary home in Portugal.

Russell Toynes:
And so, it’s the idea of, how do we do this? What would it look like? What time would we get up? What time would we be on? What time would we be off? And really just thinking about that. And we haven’t really put it to the test. The pandemic hasn’t really given us the comfort that we want to travel. Hawaii, like I mentioned, they had a really good COVID response.

Russell Toynes:
So, you have to have your vaccination, you have to have a 72-hour negative COVID test. You got to have everything right and tight or they won’t even let you on the island. And so we felt comfortable with… That was a trip we’ve been planning since 2019 for my daughter’s graduation. So, we did go to Florida during Delta. And so, we’re big Disney fans for the service and the attention to detail. And so we go to Disney World as much as possible. And we went in 2020… Or 2021, August. And that was not a vacation.

Russell Toynes:
That was like going to a neighborhood you know you don’t want to be in. It was like that. It was just, head was on a swivel. Everybody, I mean, Disney did a good job, but people do what people do. And so, people weren’t wearing their masks right. People were just being too close and all that. But it was really dead there. The crowds were nothing like they would normally be.

Russell Toynes:
So, we made the best of the trip, but now we’re trying to get back to the swing of things. And we want to travel more and see what it’s like to work in foreign places and make that adjustment. So I envy you. I might have to call you up and get some tips on how to adjust with jet lag.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I do a lot of… It’s a lot of async communication. It’s a lot of scheduled emails. It’s a lot of, at least for me, and I don’t know if this is probably just like a general tactic, but I do a lot of managing up. So, I have a manager, but then I also manage someone. So for my manager, I give regular, regular updates like, “I just did this. This is what I’m working on now.” Because we may only get… Our schedules only overlap for 30 minutes a day. So we don’t have a ton of time to really get together and talk.

Maurice Cherry:
So I’m always letting him know, “This is what I have to do. This is what I’m working on. This is where I have a blocker or something like that.” And so then he can work on those things when I’m not at work. And it’s kind of passing the baton. I would say also the benefit is that he and I have worked together at two other companies now, so we know how to work together well, as opposed to having to figure that out with someone new.

Russell Toynes:
And that’s exactly. That’s what you were asking, how did we make this adjustment? Our team consists of, like I said, five additional to me and my wife. And so, three of those five… So the two new ones are the newest. But three of those five have been with us for years. One of them was a previous student of mine, he’s been with us the longest. He’s been with us for five years now.

Russell Toynes:
And when you work with somebody that close, there’s a trust there, but also there’s just this ability to understand what needs to be done and there’s not a lot of conversation necessary. And so, that’s why it’s always hard for us when someone decides they want to leave and go to something else is just that, the onboarding time’s a headache. But there’s a lot of just energy and gaining of trust and all that that has to be built with somebody brand new that you can’t do in your typical onboarding window of 60 to 90 days or something like that.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And with this particular thing, and hopefully I’m not telling too of much my business by saying this, but he and I, we started working together in 2017 at one startup. And then he left, and then a couple, I think maybe a couple months later they eliminated our entire department at the first place we worked at.

Maurice Cherry:
But then he got a job at another startup and was like, “Do you want to work here?” And I didn’t have a job, so I was like, “Sure, let’s do it.” And then he left there to another startup, which is where he’s at now, and then was like, “Yeah, I need help and I want do these things. Do you want a job?” I’m like, “Sure.” So for him, I mean, it’s just like, “Come on with me and make these things happen.” But also has increased my salary tremendously.

Russell Toynes:
There you go. There you go.

Maurice Cherry:
So for that I am very thankful.

Russell Toynes:
It makes dollars and sense, huh?

Maurice Cherry:
Exactly. Yeah. So just to switch gears a little bit, we talked a lot about Studio Dzo. But let’s focus on you, because you’re the subject, of course, of this interview. Tell me a bit about where you grew up.

Russell Toynes:
So I grew up in Austin, Texas. I’m one of the few Austin Knights that are OOG. Not these people that came in from outside or from California. So I’ve seen Austin change tremendously over the last 38 years.

Russell Toynes:
I was born in Houston and we moved here as a kid. I remember the ride here. But yeah, I’ve grown up in Austin, and South Austin in particular, and still live in South Austin. And I have a love/hate with the city, because this is my city. And I say that because I’ve spent a long time more recently just trying to retrace my roots, and you know that can be challenging for us. And so, realizing my entire family is from Austin.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Russell Toynes:
My dad was born here in Austin. My great, great, great-

Russell Toynes:
Yeah, I was born here in Austin. My great, great, great grandfather was born in Austin and crazy thing was, just recently, a random phone call came to the studio, right? This woman’s like, “I’m cleaning up my property and there’s a headstone with Toynes on it, on my property.” And she was like, “I don’t think anybody’s buried here but there’s headstones here.” And it’s my great grandfather’s headstone. And so, he has a headstone in Evergreen Cemetery so I’m like, “What is this about?”

Russell Toynes:
And so, but we’ve always joked because the headstone in Evergreen cemetery’s incorrect, it makes him 150-years-old when he was dead. So whoever made that one, the numbers are wrong. But this one had the correct numbers with the wrong spelling of his first name. And so it was just all … I don’t know the story behind this but just to reiterate, my family has been here and everything about my family is Austin and East Austin, in particular. And so it’s hard for me to see East Austin different.

Russell Toynes:
It’s hard for me to see it where I don’t know what our black population is but it was 8%, I think, at its highest and it’s three maybe now. I don’t know, but it’s not what it used to be and the communities now are so transient. It’s starting to feel a little bit like New York where you just don’t know who’s going to be here for how long. So it’s been sad for me to accept what’s happening to Austin. And I think it’s also been hard for me to accept that maybe this isn’t my forever place. Even though my family has been here forever, this may not be my forever place.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I think that’s something a lot of people are realizing particularly over the past two years. Not just because of the pandemic, but because of gentrification, inflation, everything is more expensive. Atlanta is very much a transient city like that, as well. I’m originally from Alabama but I’ve been in Atlanta now for 23 years. I think I came in ’99. So I’ve been here for about 23 years now and even seeing how much Atlanta has changed when I came as a teenager to now being a full grown-ass man and seeing how things have changed, even just different parts of the city.

Maurice Cherry:
I remember when I first got here, I’d say maybe I was a junior in college. My first apartment was like$600 a month in Buckhead. That’s impossible now. And then I stayed in another place in Buckhead, it was a two bedroom. One room was my office, one was my bedroom and it was right off of Peachtree Street in Buckhead proper for like $750 a month or something like that. Now those are like $2.5 million condos. It’s wild seeing how the city has changed over the years. So I totally get what you mean.

Russell Toynes:
Yeah. It’s a hard pill to swallow and then also to see who gets pushed out and who comes in, right? And it’s not like everybody’s just winning, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Russell Toynes:
So it’s hard. It’s hard.

Maurice Cherry:
Especially here because Atlanta, of course, has a reputation of being a city that’s really … There’s a lot of prosperous black people here. A lot of affluent black people here, which is true. I totally don’t think I would’ve been able to accomplish what I was able to accomplish entrepreneurship wise in any other city but Atlanta because I had a lot of support from the black community here. But yeah, rents are getting more and more expensive. Everything is just more expensive. It’s tough to move here now and start out fresh than you could maybe even like 10 years ago because everything is just changing.

Russell Toynes:
Yeah. I love Atlanta. Me and my wife, we have friends and … We don’t have any family but we would like to think of them as family. But we have a lot of people that we know in Atlanta and we love going there and it’s just a huge, huge city. People think Austin, they think, “Oh it’s such a cool city.” It’s a small … When you talk about footprint wise, the city is small. And Atlanta, you got like seven lane highways and I don’t even know why you have a speed limit. Let’s be honest, right?

Maurice Cherry:
That’s true. That’s true.

Russell Toynes:
Everybody, even the police, man, they’re out there 80 on the highway and it says 65, 55. You’re like, you can’t even legally go this limit. Yeah, and I love what y’all have done unlike Austin, right? What y’all have done with Ponce City Market, how you took an old building and instead of tearing it down like they would do in Austin, you utilized it and I know they’re not at all affordable in any way. But they used to utilize it for housing in a development instead of just tearing it down and creating something brand new, which is Austin’s mode of operations here.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, we have a couple of places like that in Atlanta. There’s Krog Street Market. There’s a couple other places probably further outside the perimeter but Atlanta is good for tearing shit down, too, and just starting anew. I tell people, because I used to work in the tourism industry here and I tell people Atlanta’s a city that every seven years tries to find a new identity. It tries to find like what’s the new thing that we can latch on to and really make our thing. Because I was working in the tourism industry from 2005 to 2007.

Maurice Cherry:
And so during that time Hurricane Katrina happened. But when I first started in 2005, Atlanta was really trying to distinguish itself from say, Orlando or Vegas or New York because people like to come to Atlanta. But the reasons that they like to come to Atlanta were not … How can I put this? Family friendly reasons for wanting to come. Like, they’ll go to Orlando because of Disney World, they’ll go to New York City because of the culture. But there was no distinguishing thing that people would come to Atlanta for. At least not ones that you would put on a tourism pamphlet.

Russell Toynes:
Other than the World of Coke and the aquarium.

Maurice Cherry:
Look, we didn’t even have the aquarium then. This was pre the aquarium, yeah. I was at the groundbreaking for the aquarium. But this was even before then, all we had was World of Coke. We had the zoo and Turner Fields. That’s about it. There’s not a lot of places, really. People came to Atlanta back then because, one, it carried over this reputation of being a party city from the 90s but you’ve got hip-hop, you’ve got all kinds of entertainment. You’ve got clubs. That’s why people came to Atlanta to have fun, to have a good time. But none of those things … They’re not going to put strippers on a pamphlet and have that at the airport. Is that a reason people would come? Sure. But that’s not one that the Atlanta Convention and Visitor’s Bureau would get behind because they’re trying to get-

Russell Toynes:
If Vegas can do it.

Maurice Cherry:
Well. But see, they’re trying to get multi-million dollar shows to come here. And we had a huge show pull out in 2005 called, Home Builders. Something happened with like, somebody said the wrong thing to somebody and this million dollar show pulled out of Atlanta. And then there was another big show, T.D. Jakes, the evangelist, the preacher. Yeah. He used to do this big thing called, MegaFest and he would bring it to Atlanta. And it was basically like a two week, I don’t know, MegaFest. I mean it had carnival rides, it had speakers and panels and all this sort of stuff and they pulled out, as well. And so Atlanta was like, “Well, we don’t have any reason for people to come here.” Because the other thing was these conventions would all be downtown and downtown is a ghost town after five o’clock.

Russell Toynes:
Yes, yes.

Maurice Cherry:
People commute downtown and then they leave and the only thing that’s really downtown at night are homeless folks. And so because of that, conventions didn’t feel like they wanted to have people down there because they were getting accosted by people on the street and they didn’t feel it was safe and everything. And so, one of the things that happened was the aquarium opened but then Hurricane Katrina happened and a lot of conventions had to relocate to Atlanta.

Maurice Cherry:
And so we had a big boom there for a while but then that died out as New Orleans tried to rebuild and conventions went back there. So then the Georgia Tourism Department basically worked with the state to get all these tax benefits for movies and television shows and studios and stuff to shoot here. So now that’s the big thing that Atlanta is for. Atlanta is like quote, unquote, “Black Hollywood.”

Russell Toynes:
I love it, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Because you have so many movies and shows and things that are here that people come and shoot for. I mean it’s rare now, well it used to be rare back then, but now it’s super common to watch a movie and be like, “Oh yeah, that’s in Atlanta.” Like I’ll watch Black Panther, that scene at the museum. I used to work at that museum selling tickets.

Russell Toynes:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Maurice Cherry:
So, I’d look at stuff and be like, “Okay, that’s …” But even now that’s starting to die off because politics, now politicians here have certain views and then that goes against what the companies are here that are giving them … It’s a whole … Atlanta’s complicated, man. Really it’s Georgia, but Atlanta itself is a complicated blue dot in a very red state.

Russell Toynes:
That is, yeah, that is a whole message right there. Exactly. I mean, we’ve even talked about moving to Atlanta and they were like, “But it’s in Georgia,” you know? And I’m in Texas, so I can’t really say anything because both states are sitting in the same spot. But just like Atlanta, Austin is that blueberry in the tomato soup.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Russell Toynes:
But unfortunately, like you said, the politics of both states have gotten a bad reputation.

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I mean, if you’re in Atlanta, it’s so funny. I remember this from, oh, I know what the show is. It was, Sex and the City. And there’s this episode of, Sex and the City, where Carrie and Miranda are double dating these guys. And one of the guys says something about how he’s never left New York and Miranda’s like, “Oh, he’s a weirdo if he’s never left New York.” There’s people here that have moved to Atlanta and have never left Atlanta. They’ve stayed right in the perimeter or right in inside the metropolitan area because anything outside of here is deliverance. It’s a totally different thing, if you go an hour in any direction from the center of Atlanta, like good luck.

Russell Toynes:
Yeah, it is strange also. But the thing is y’all can travel for three or four hours, maybe not safely, but you can travel for three or four hours and be in a whole other state. With us, it takes eight hours to get to El Paso.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh, yeah. That’s true.

Russell Toynes:
It’s like, you want to get to the coast, that’s a three hour trip. You want to get to Dallas, that’s a three and a half hour trip with no traffic. And so, Houston, same thing, three hours. And so everything just takes a long time and you’re still in the damn state.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So being from Austin and growing up there, were you exposed to a lot of design and everything growing up?

Russell Toynes:
Short answer, no. For me, designer was exclusive to jeans and fragrance. I didn’t know, no one ever told me. I think this just happens to being an 80’s kid. Having someone sit down and point to you in the library like, you see that crappy poster, somebody designed that. You see this book, someone designed it. No one ever did that, right? So you really only knew the jobs that you saw people do, you know? So my dad worked in restaurants and then basically did sales for Circuit City. That’s dating, right?

Russell Toynes:
My mom’s always been in insurance and then pretty much every single person I knew either worked for the post office or for some insurance company or had military history or just worked some random office job. So no one ever sat down with me, ever and said, you could be this. I was talking to my wife and I was like, “The first time I ever met somebody at a career fair or something,” and then that person was like, “This is what I do.” And then I said, “I want to do that.” The very first time that happened, I think I was in fourth grade and it was a lobbyist and I was like, “I want to do what they do.”

Russell Toynes:
I have no idea what was compelling about being a lobbyist. But I think it was the idea of convincing people, right? And so, no. No one ever told me. So design wasn’t ever presented to me. And it wasn’t until I realized when I went to school, that design is problem solving. And that’s all I have ever done as a kid, is I was that kid that woke up at five o’clock in the morning with a problem, right? With a problem that I manifested in my dreams and I had to find a solution. So I was constantly taking things apart, re-imagining things, putting things together, just making up shit for myself to do and I was always solving problems.

Russell Toynes:
I’ve always been a natural leader, too. I just managed to convince people to follow me in some direction. And thankfully I never started a cult but it probably wouldn’t been too hard for me. But I always had the knack of being a loner but having no problem getting followers, but never wanted to be a follower. So I was that kid that was cool with everybody, but really was kind of a loner in a way. Everyone knew me. I had lots of friends but I only let certain people in.

Russell Toynes:
So as a natural problem solver, I just found myself into lots of things, but no one ever gave me the design word to call it. And it wasn’t until my older brother graduated from school from ACC also with a design degree and a degree in politics, that I even understood that designers had software and they did things and it just wasn’t like … I don’t know, it wasn’t a word or it wasn’t painter, you know?

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So you went to Austin Community College and you studied design and visual communications. How was that experience?

Russell Toynes:
Like a lot of black designers, I had a very unconventional journey into design. So as I mentioned, I didn’t know what design was. So my original entrepreneur efforts started when I was catching shoplifters for four years. And then my daughter was born and she needed round-the-clock care at home. So me and my wife had to decide who’s going to stay at home and take care of her and who’s going to go to work. And she had the better benefits so it was like, “Okay, I’ll stay at home and take care of her.”

Russell Toynes:
Well, money still needs to be had and so I always had aspirations to be a film director. So I started writing little films and things like that, but that doesn’t pay but I had the knowledge and understanding to cut video. And so I started out just cutting people’s home videos, taking people’s crappy home videos and removing all this stuff where mom left it on the table recording nothing and all that and just started doing that. And that led down to a very strange path to me working with lots of people, one being Vanilla Ice and-

Maurice Cherry:
What?

Russell Toynes:
Yeah, random. So yeah, I did a really, really crappy music video for a friend. I did it for $6, too. That’s just how you helped your friends for back then. And so, and then a promoter for Vanilla Ice saw it … I’m embarrassed to say that. But saw it and then they called me up and they’re like, “We have a whole bunch of raw footage from a concert in ’99 or 2000.” They’re like, “Can you cut it and put it to DVD?” And I was like, “Yeah.”

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Russell Toynes:
And so that got things started. So that got me out of doing the home videos. And then that’s when people were like, “Oh, can you do a music video for me? Can you do that?” And I ended up working on a big project for Text Dots, a training video for them. And I saw the future of me being in this film video game but I had no education. I had no knowledge, I didn’t know anything about anything. I was just doing whatever, how it worked and it worked okay.

Russell Toynes:
But then in 2006, I guess it was 2005, I was working with a rapper and they were less than honest with the people who were giving them money. And then basically, I always tried to operate with contracts. And basically he was trying to get out of the contract and made it quite dramatic. I’ll spare you the details. But let’s just say that, I had to act less than professional because he was acting less than professional, you know [crosstalk 00:39:51]-

Maurice Cherry:
Got it, got it. No, no, I know what you mean.

Russell Toynes:
… when you get grown. And so, I was just like, “I’m done with this shit. I’m done with this shit” And I just woke up January 1st, 2006 and I was like, “I’m a designer. That’s it, that’s it.” I just put that shit out in the universe, right? And so, my older brother gave me a bootleg copy of CS2 and I just started working in Illustrator. I had already been designing DVD covers and things like that for the stuff that I had been doing, but I didn’t know anything about it. And so, but what was crazy was like I said, I have never had a problem getting people to follow me.

Russell Toynes:
I just told the world I was a designer and the world just said, “Okay,” and the world just like, “so can you do this for me? Can you do this for me?” And so I had a nice little nest of construction people and concrete people who were just like, they didn’t know anything about anything but they could just pay me and they’d get their carbonless forms and business cards and mailers and their trucks with vinyl on it and things like that.

Russell Toynes:
And I was doing the worst design on the planet and it was awful, but it was paying barely any of the bills I had. And I was just making it each day. But I thought I was balling, too, I got myself a little … This tells you the time, too. I got myself a little one room office on Burnett Road in central Austin for $250 a month. That’s all it cost.

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Russell Toynes:
So I thought I was balling. I was like, I got an office and this and this. I didn’t need no office, I could have worked from home, but this was just my excuse to give myself the tools to feel like I have arrived. And then I started mentoring young people at LBJ and I had gone to LBJ Science Academy at the time. It was called Science Academy at the time. Now it’s called Liberal Arts and Science Academy. But I started mentoring young people there and they were learning Illustrator Photoshop in design all in one semester.

Russell Toynes:
And I was like, these damn kids are going to take my job. I got to get more education. So I went to ACC and I was 27-years-old. I had a five-year-old daughter at the time. I was divorced. And I just saw that I had a lot of passion, I had a lot of drive, but I had no education. And this just winging it was proving not … I wasn’t going to be able to sustain myself if I wanted to make a life for myself at all in design. So I went to school and that was the best damn decision I ever made in my life.

Maurice Cherry:
So after you went to school and you graduated, what was your early career like? You mentioned earlier, you had worked for Dell for quite a number of years.

Russell Toynes:
You know, I still freelanced while I was in school and I very much have always been a person to take advantage of every single opportunity. And I meet somebody and I’m like, if I want to work with them, I’m going to make them work with me. I just have the ability to just manifest a lot of what I want. And so for me, I stayed very involved in design and design community and everything. And I had a great, great portfolio professor who later became a mentor, Owen Hammonds and, yeah, still is a friend of mine. I mean, I call him my mentor. He says, we’re just friends.

Russell Toynes:
But I still see him as a huge, huge influence to me. I attribute almost all of my success to him and it was honored to have him in my wedding. It was an honor to have him in my life and call him a friend. And we’re both very, very busy, but whenever we get on the phone with each other or see each other, it’s just an honor. So, but yeah, he really took me under his wing. He was my portfolio professor at ACC and he just saw this hustler in me and he was like, “This dude’s going to do it.” And he just plugged me in and just stayed on me and never, never bullshitted me, never gassed me up, always pushed me to be better.

Russell Toynes:
And so right out of school … I’m sure you have them in Atlanta. I’m sure you’ve heard of them, like various talent head hunters, right? Like Aquent or Liaison Resources or the Creative Group and all of them. So Aquent had come to one of our classes and talked about, they’d find jobs for creatives and all this stuff like that. So I just graduated, I mean, literally the day we finished class. So I hadn’t even graduated yet, just the class was done. I just was on in the car driving. I just called them up and I was like, “Hey, heard you can get me a job.” And they were like, “Send me your portfolio.”

Russell Toynes:
And then the next day they called me in. They’re like, “Hey, let’s talk.” And they’re like, “We have these jobs.” And so I started interviewing for people and I interviewed at Dell and it took them a little bit of time to see my magic. But after four months, basically interviewing with them two or three times, I interviewed with them for lunches and all this stuff. And I was like, “You like me, I like you. Let’s do this,” right? Like dating. I got put on at Dell and I started out as a designer and worked my way up to senior designer, art director, senior art director.

Russell Toynes:
And really, I tell people I got my degree in Visual Communications at ACC, but I got my Masters in the Business of Design at Dell. I had an amazing creative director, Tommy Lynn, who really, really, really taught me a lot, gave me a lot of autonomy, really trusted me. And I still see him as a friend and a mentor, even now. And we’ve both been gone from Dell for many years, but I learned the business of design. I understood how to handle clients, how to give them the level of service that brings them back. And I know it sounds weird because I’m was on the brand team, so we only answered to the brand.

Russell Toynes:
We developed the brand, we evolved the brand, but we had internal clients who used our team to create resources that promoted Dell’s brand. So it would be a corporate responsibility team. It really wasn’t marketing, we didn’t do anything about selling product. It was about selling the brand as a whole. And so having both Owen Hammonds, having the education, helped me land Dell but Dell helped me really take this entrepreneurial energy that I’ve always possessed and really, really hone it into-

Russell Toynes:
… kind of possessed and really, really hone it into where my next step was, was, and I didn’t really realize that I wanted to go back to being an entrepreneur, but they set me up tremendously and gave me a fat paycheck to learn over the course of five and a half years. So I’m not going to complain about that.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, there you go. I mean, when you had your time there working at Dell and learning about the business of design, was that the impetus for you to start your own studio?

Russell Toynes:
No, honestly, no. I saw myself like everybody else. You go from one place, you do three to five years, then you go to another place. And honestly, I didn’t see myself going back into entrepreneurship, because I had never had a nine to five salary with benefits and all that. I had basically worked an hourly job until my daughter was born, and then basically just like hustled in the worst way possible to make crumbs doing video and design and whatnot. So when somebody was like, “Here, here’s a paycheck and here’s some benefits and here’s a lifestyle you’ve never had.” I just figured this is it. I’ve just landed the jackpot. But then over five and a half years, you start to realize there is a ceiling, and it depends on who your manager is. It depends on who your executive is, and you start realizing, people start leaving and you start wondering, am I the last ship… Sorry, am I the last rat on a sinking ship?

Russell Toynes:
And so all my team that I had been with over the five and a half years, only one other person was with me. And so we had watched like 20 people over the course of the time come in and out that it was just like, okay, the writing’s in the wall, you either going to be a lifer here or you got to find something else. It was really my wife who said… She’s always been my greatest supporter, and I had talked about owning a business and her father had sold his business and was kind of always envious of design and wanted to do something with me. And so I said, “Look, we’ll do something, but we’ll do it on my terms.” And he was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And so after basically I tried to bluff my executive at Dell to give me more money and to give me a promotion, basically I tried to bluff and be like, “Well, I’m going to have to go find something else.” And they were like, “Look…”

Russell Toynes:
So I was like, “Look, I just can’t blow smoke. I got to do this.” And so I left on September 7th. And I thought I was going to take the whole month of September off. And like two weeks later, started the laying the ground work for Studio Dzo. With my father-in-law and mine to be my partner, long story short, we realized quickly we cannot work together. My wife realized that before we realized that.

Russell Toynes:
And my wife was like, “Look, if… Because we were about to get married, she’s like, “If we’re going to get married. We can’t have this. I got to have a relationship with my father. I got to have a relationship with my husband. Y’all can’t be at each other’s throat.” We had very different mindsets of what this business was going to be. So we had a negotiation with him, had a conversation and we said, “It’s time for you to retire. Go and do your own thing.” And, and he’s a restless person anyway. So he had a software business. He’s now able to dedicate himself to that. And so he was with us for about the first seven months of Studio Dzo.

Maurice Cherry:
Okay. I mean, I guess you didn’t want it to be that much of a family business.

Russell Toynes:
He really wanted that. He only has girls. So he really wanted this family business with the son-in-law and all this stuff like that. And I think he had this idea, but in his head that he really wanted. But yeah, now it’s just me and my wife and it’s good. We have the same interests, both financially and the goal of the business. So we are in sync where if you have different people who have different lifestyles and different households, it gets complicated. It’s like, well, if you’re eating steak, I need to eat steak. Where it’s like now we got to afford two steaks, versus me and my wife having a steak kind of thing. And so, yeah, it’s really complicate when you have different households and the family business is obviously complicated, but me and my wife very much, we have professional backgrounds so we always operate very professionally, at least on camera.

Maurice Cherry:
What were those kind of early days like with the Studio?

Russell Toynes:
Oh man. So really it was… Like I said, I got the business of design from Dell, so I knew what I wanted, but it was scary. I’m not going to lie. But I knew that I had set myself up financially thanks to Dell that if I failed, I was going to fail quickly and I was just going to go and work some at some other place. So I knew what I wanted. And so thankfully I was aware that couldn’t do it all. So I had hired a friend of mine to help me develop the brand. I had hired a student of mine to just basically be like the hands of things. I had really just put people in the right places so that way I can focus on the development of the business. Thankfully, my wife had already been doing books for her father’s business and she’s an accountant, that’s her education in accounting.

Russell Toynes:
And so she does all things like money side. So she’s thankfully was able to do all of that. So all I had to do was basically sell and do the work and that’s kind of what I’m really, really good at. And so it was scary at first, but we also were a smaller team. I guess we were five at the time, but I just didn’t know what it was going to be. But honestly like people have just trusted us and I hate to kind of keep hitting it over the head with it, but I’ve never had a problem with getting people to follow us. So being able to sit down with somebody and tell them what we do and why we do it and why they should choose us wasn’t difficult.

Russell Toynes:
What was difficult was disrupting design business, design industry. So we’re designers who design signage, wayfinding, and physical experiences. But the problem with the sign industry is they’re like the bastard child of construction. So what typically happens is a developer gives their general contractor a budget for signage. And so the general contractor is just trying to find somebody to stick something’s up on the walls so that way they can get their certificate of occupancy. And so no one is ever talking about brand. No one’s ever talking about experience. No one’s talking about that. These sign shops, some of them, not all of them, are just trying to basically put a piece of acrylic with ADA beads on and in whatever default typeface they can in the cheapest way possible. It’s like a race to the bottom. It’s like everyone’s trying to be the Walmart of signs.

Russell Toynes:
And so I knew that I did not want to do that. And after listening to my father-in-law, who owned a sign company for like 20 years and he owned Sign Tech International, which at a time was like one of the biggest manufacturers in Texas. He was like, “No, no people, that’s not how it works. We design it. We sell it. We mark up the price and that’s how we get paid.” And I was like, “So what happens when you design it and then they go and take it to somebody else and they get a lower bid?” And he’s like, “Well, that just happens.” And I was like, “No, it doesn’t. Not here. It’s not going to happen here.” I was like, “We’re designers. We get paid to solve problems. We need to be paid or we’re not going to do this.” And he is like, “You’re not going to get people to pay for design before they see it.”

Russell Toynes:
And I was like, “Well, then we’re going to be out of business real quick.” That was the weird thing is going into people who are used to basically, “Well, show me something. And if I like it, I’ll buy it.” We’re going to walk through this together. We’re going to talk about your problems. We’re going to talk about opportunities. You’re going to pay me up front and then I’m going to show you what that is going to look like. And that’s like I said, me and my father-in-law butted heads quite a bit. It was over that, because he was like, “Oh, I’ve been working with this person for years. We don’t need to charge him for design.” I was like, “No, you’re setting a precedent with everybody if you do that.” So we would butt heads and that’s when he was like, “Maybe this isn’t good for us to be in business together.

Russell Toynes:
And that’s when I was like, “Let’s do it my way.” My wife was already on board and we now have, that’s all we do. That’s what we do. And people know us for that is that we solve our problems with design first. And then if you like what we design, and we’re all done with the design process, we’re going to give you a quote for fabrication, installation. But because you paid for that design process, you can take those files and share them with anybody else. You’ve already paid me for my work. This is now in your hands. So if you want to go out there and get a quote from somebody else, you can. No sweat off my back. I just keep it moving and go on to the next project. But if they do go with us, then we’ll fabricate and we have partners all around the world we fabricate with. And then we have partners both locally and all around to install.

Russell Toynes:
And 90% still go with us. I would say more than that. 95% stay with us to do the fabrication, installation process because we don’t cut corners. And so they know that if we spec this particular material, we spec this particular lighting temperature, whatever, that’s what’s going to be. It’s not going to get in the hands of somebody else that then chops it up to make more profit. And then gives them a subpar product. We don’t do that. And so we have no problem getting people to commit through the whole entire process, but we put those breaks, because some people have to get multiple bids. Some people think that they’re not getting the best deal. And we tell people, we will never be the cheapest, but we’re the best, is what I say.

Russell Toynes:
We do good work. That’s our motto. We do good work for good people with good people. And so first and foremost is that, like I said, I don’t work for anybody. I work with people. We call all of our clients partners because I pick and choose who I want to work with. If they’re not a good person, we don’t work with them. And there’s been times where I’ve had to dig in on somebody just for a second, like they call us up and want to work with us. I Google everybody, and if I find anything that doesn’t agree with our values, I just say, “Hey, I don’t think it’s a good fit.”

Russell Toynes:
Because we believe that everyone should be treated equitably, fairly, and that this world is unfair and we’re not going to contribute to that in any way possible. We want to support all those, especially those who are not supported. We want to support the weirdos, the people who are aren’t typically accepted. And we want to support obviously our black community, our underrepresented community. And so we do a lot to make sure that our good work extends beyond what actually earns us money, but also we do a lot of work with nonprofits and we donate a lot of hours and times to people in organizations.

Maurice Cherry:
And I have to say one of the best things about having your own business is running it exactly how you want it. Like if it’s a bad client experience, you don’t have to work with them. You can fire the client. Or if you have a certain intake process where you know exactly the kind of people you want to work with, that’s the best part. That was the best part back when I had my studio of really picking and choosing the clients that you want to have, knowing that just because any work comes across your desk, you don’t have to take it if it doesn’t feel good.

Russell Toynes:
That’s the freedom. And that’s what I tell people is that I left Dell to have that freedom. And a lot of people think freelance comes with freedom. I say, there’s nothing free about freelancing at all. You have to decide, do I want this money or do I not want this money? And for us we’re not dollar driven. As long as we’re able to pay all of our team members and pay ourselves a salary that we have dedicated, that’s it. Anything extra’s great, and we really typically roll it into the business one way or the other, but I don’t want to have to say yes to every project and know that it’s bad work, but it’s paying the bills.

Russell Toynes:
And so I’m a firm believer that just like free work leads to more free work, same thing with bad work. Crap work leads to more crap work. And so if it’s not a right fit for us, the project’s not a right fit. If the timeline… That’s the biggest thing is some people just don’t understand the process and the timeline. And if they don’t want to adhere to our process and respect our process, that’s a big red flag. So exactly, being able to pick and choose who you work with is really the reward for owning the business. The rest of it’s still work. It doesn’t matter where you go, it’s work. It’s not called fun.

Maurice Cherry:
But the best thing you can do though, because you know it’s still work is at least shape your own ideal work conditions.

Russell Toynes:
Exactly, exactly. And that’s the thing too like I said about what I learned about Dell is, I had a great creative director who taught us the work life balance. And I will say that Dell actually has a really good work life balance throughout the entire company. So never did I feel like I had to be… I was on the edge of burnout or anything like that. When it was weekends, no one called you. When it was holidays, no one called you. You didn’t get woken up in the middle of the night having to do this or that. So there was a really good work life balance. So I knew I did not want to take that away from myself. And I didn’t want to create an environment where my team felt that way. We offer 27 plus paid holidays to all of our team members. Doesn’t matter if they’re part-time or not. We just went through the holidays today or yesterday, they get two weeks off at the end of the year. I’m like, “I’m paying them for two weeks?”

Russell Toynes:
But we want them, and that’s on top of their PTO too. They get two weeks PTO on top of the 27 holidays and for us, and then they still have the get it done model. So if they want to travel somewhere and work three days and then be off for two days, then they only use two days PTO. And so for us, we really just want them to have a reason to be with us. And that do good work motto is really what it’s all about is that we want them to do good work, but we have to do good work by them. And we have to treat them fairly. We have to give them a reasonable salary. I can’t compete with the Googles and the Apples and these people who are throwing stupid money at all these people.

Russell Toynes:
I can’t compete with that. We’re a small business. But what I can say is I can give you a work life balance that’s fair, treat you like a human being. You’re going to speak with another human being who’s also a father, who’s also a husband, who’s also an educator, who’s going to understand what you’re going through, and we’re going to make a compromise. If you got to take some days off, let’s figure out what it’s going to work. If something’s got to be moved around, let’s figure out how to make it work, so that way you can be efficient and we can be efficient.

Maurice Cherry:
With Studio Dzo, I mean, of course, clearly you’re doing a ton of great work, but you also do a lot of community work as well. And one organization that you work with is one that our listeners, I’m sure, know about. They’re probably members of it. And that’s AAGD, which is African American Graphic Designers. Tell me about that. How’d you get involved with them?

Russell Toynes:
So it’s funny. So [Owen Hammonds 01:00:55] had kind of twisted my arm. So I’m a designer, I’m not an artist. And I make that very, very clear. I don’t express myself through art or at least through design. I don’t. I doodle, I do some things to be creative, but I’m not an artist. But Owen kind of put me up to this challenge. They were doing a gallery thing at [St. Ed’s 01:01:16], and he kind of said, “Hey Russ, I want you to participate.” And like I said, he’s a mentor of mine, so anything he asked me to do, I’m going to say yes. So he was like, “This is a self-portrait gallery and you have to basically draw or create an image of yourself.” And it was like the worst project ever for me to have to do.

Russell Toynes:
So in there, we’re presenting our work at the end and it’s a gallery opening and everything. And [Terrance Moline 01:01:42] was also part of that gallery. And so I hear him talking and he’s from New Orleans and he tells a little bit about his story and all that. I, like I said, I’m kind of a person who just says, I’m going to make this happen. I immediately looked at him and I was like, We’re going to be friends.” I’m going to make this man my friend. And so I introduced myself and he told me a little bit about AAGD, I think we followed each other on LinkedIn or on Facebook or something like that. And then we just kind of bumped into each other a little bit off and on. And I was really, really interested. And I think I pinged him a couple times about it and asked him about it.

Russell Toynes:
He had had the Facebook group for a couple years. I think 2006 is when he started it, maybe. Katrina forced him to move to Austin. So he had had it for a while, but it was just like a social thing. It was just a community based thing that was more about sharing the work. But he had visions of it being kind of a business model, but didn’t really know where it was going to go. So I guess probably 2019, he really started doubling down on it being a business model and creating more benefits for its members in exchange for a membership fee. And so pandemic hit early 2020, and I don’t know how we kicked off, but we just like, we hit the ground running. He was just like, “Hey, you’ve been really involved in AAGD like with me, I’d love for you to look over some of this stuff and just tell me what would you do?”

Russell Toynes:
And I had been involved in AIGA, quite a bit. I was the vice president. Owen Hammonds being the president at the time, too, when I was vice president. I had kind of understood like basically AAGD is kind of like a black AIGA. So I understood what was working for AIGA, also what wasn’t working for AIGA, and what I saw could be an opportunity for AAGD. So we just kind of like together just worked on how do we build this out to be a membership model. So another core member is [Dave McClinton 01:03:40]. And me and Dave met at that gallery too. And I looked at Dave and I was like, “We’re going to be friends,” too. So Dave got really involved. So it was just one of those things, like these two gentlemen that I met one night, and I said, “I want to be friends with them,” fast forward a couple years here we are we meet every Tuesday. We joke around. We hang out, and it’s just it’s an absolute honor to call these very, very talented, passionate creatives friends of mine.

Russell Toynes:
But then meeting all the people through AAGD, that I’ve met, it’s just amazing. It started up with just the need to create community for himself because transplant from New Orleans to Austin, not finding the black community that he had New Orleans wanting to find those, he needed to find it online. Now to this international organization that the one thing that we have in common is that we’re all black in some varying degree and that we are all creatives. And the creativity spans from film, digital UX UI, all across the board. And just as a design educator and as a person with my experience, I am constantly sharing my knowledge about both the business of design and then also helping them empower them with the confidence to charge more or to get contracts or to understand this idea of freelancing sounds great, but you have to set goals or you’re just going to work yourself to death.

Russell Toynes:
You got to set a salary. You got to tell yourself this is how much money I want to make. And then divide that up by 12 and then divide that up by a day and figure out how much money you got to make every single day to make that salary. So a lot of people don’t understand that right off the bat when they’re like, “I want to be an entrepreneur.” And then unfortunately too, a lot of black creatives don’t see themselves in the work space. And so they think entrepreneurship is the only path for them, because they’ve never seen anybody like them at a major creative agency. And so, a lot of them have no understanding of the business of design, because they’ve never worked at a agency, they’ve only done it freelance, they’ve only done it their own way.

Russell Toynes:
So I try to meet them where they’re at and share with them both my experience from Dell, but so my experience as a owner of Studio Dzo, and just try to tell them, if you are finding these challenges, these are some of the solutions. So AAGD has been a great endeavor of Terrance’s and I’m just honored to be trusted with some of it.

Maurice Cherry:
And so kind of bring it back to education, we sort of alluded to this before we started of recording the interview, but you’ve talked about being a design educator. You also now teach at where you learned design, which was at Austin Community College, that you’ve kind of had this full circle moment. Talk to me about that.

Russell Toynes:
Yeah. So really, again, I’m no stranger to anything. My whole life has just been like this one long story of, surely you’re going to be a designer, but I have always taught in some capacity. So while I was freelancing back in like 2005, I needed additional income because freelancing wasn’t doing it. And so I started working with an organization called No Kidding, Straight Talk from Teen Parents, which was funded by the Attorney General’s Office, which was a nonprofit organization that basically utilized the stories of teen parents to use a teaching tool for middle school and high school students. And so I technically didn’t fall under the category of teen parent. I was 20 years old when my daughter was born, but we had a very unique story. My daughter needed lots of medical care. And so my story was unique in the sense of as much as you thought you had everything planned, plan for the unexpected.

Russell Toynes:
And so I go to middle schools and high schools and give presentations and talk and that ended up putting me on national stage at the National Child Support Conference. So I’ve always had presentation and teaching opportunities. And then while I was in school to supplement my income, I used to teach defensive driving. So I tell people, if you can take a room people and for six hours and make them enjoy it, you could do anything. Because they don’t even want to be there. They bought tickets to a show they don’t even want to be at. But everything I do, I do 113%. That’s my motto. And so no matter teaching defensive driving or talking to young people, I just pour my heart into it, because I’m just kind of one of those people that just, I can’t half-ass anything.

Russell Toynes:
And so it was just only natural for me to see myself as a design educator, but really what it was, and I attribute this 100%, was Owen Hammonds. To see another black man teach and to be passionate and understanding at the same time, but also pull no punches and really give it to you straight and push people to be the best designer they can be. He gave me that vision of like, “I could do this.” And so I made it my goal after starting at Dell, I said, “In five years, I want to teach,” like that’s my next rung. And it only took me three years later after saying that, that I started teaching. So I started teaching in 2015, I think, 2015. I’m like, man, we’re going up on seven years now. I can’t bel-

Russell Toynes:
Man, we’re coming up on seven years now, and just I can’t believe it’s, yeah, 2015, I started teaching, and I started teaching Portfolio. I have been teaching Portfolio for seven years.

Russell Toynes:
I started a new course because I was finding that my students had no knowledge, including myself. When I left school, when I graduated, I started at Dell, I never knew what a project manager did. I thought they were just like the pretty people who sold our designs. I didn’t know what they did.

Russell Toynes:
Then when you get an amazing project manager who has your back and is that buffer between you and the client and really helps elevate your design and keeps you on track, but keeps them focused and not, “Oh, I want to see this. I want to see that.” When you have a really good project manager, it just changes your life as a designer. So at Dell, I had the whole kit and caboodle. I had great project managers, and I had terrible project managers at various times.

Russell Toynes:
So I was finding that my students were getting into Portfolio, which is a capstone class. They graduate after my class with no knowledge that there were other roles other than designer and creative director. For some reason, they all know creative director, but they didn’t know like associate creative director, senior art director, art director, senior designer, junior designer, production designer. They didn’t know anything about those. Those roles didn’t even pop up in their heads.

Russell Toynes:
So I had basically harassed my department chair that I’m, like, these students have no idea the various areas of design that they could find themselves in, and a lot of the project managers, the best project managers I ever worked with, all had degrees in design. They just didn’t have either the passion or the skills to hack it, but they understood design, which makes a really great project manager.

Russell Toynes:
So along with Rachel Wyatt, colleague of mine, we wrote this course called Studio, Design Studio. Basically, it’s a simulation course where students come in, and they play the role of a project manager, or an art director, or senior designer or creative director, or something like that. They change roles throughout the course, but it gives them a real-life experience. Then they have three projects over the course of that semester, and all those clients are real clients so they have to deal with somebody not liking their work. It’s not about the grade. It’s about did you solve the problem? Did you meet your client’s expectations?

Russell Toynes:
I remember the first time I taught that class was 2020. We wrote this course during the pandemic, and we delivered it in the fall of 2020. I had two teams. I have eight students, and I had two teams of four. One had their presentation buckled up, and it was right and tight, and they knocked their socks off. Then the other team, they just couldn’t get their shit together. They presented, and it was just falling apart and everything, and it was all over.

Russell Toynes:
I meet with them, the teams, and I was like, “How are you feeling?” And they’re like, “Shit, this is an awful feeling.” I was like, “Remember that.” I was like, “Get your shit together, get it right and tight. When you’re presenting in front of a client, this is the opportunity for you to sell your design. This is everything. You’re building trust and all that.”

Russell Toynes:
So this course is really doing what it’s designed to do is to give them that experience. That way, when they go out and get their first job at an agency or at a studio, these roles, these requirements, these things that they’re going to be asked of aren’t foreign to them that they’ve like, “Oh, I presented my work.”

Russell Toynes:
Because a lot of designers aren’t forced to present and sell their work. They just hand it to a project manager or to a creative director. They don’t actually get to engage with the client and be able to talk of about and articulate their design thinking. Instead, they’re just like, “Do you like it or do you not?”

Russell Toynes:
So I explained to my students like, “You have to be able to sell your work,” and so by the time they get to Portfolio, they’re able to talk about their work in a much better way because of that Studio class. Now we have Studio One and Studio Two, which just is kind of a repeat, but just more responsibility and more expectations.

Maurice Cherry:
What do your students teach you?

Russell Toynes:
Man, patience. But, honestly, like I tell them, I get paid to learn from them. They teach me more than I could ever teach them.

Russell Toynes:
What I’ve realized more than anything is that we often only see life through our own lenses, and you asked me how did I get started in design? Did I know about designing? I didn’t. To this day, I meet people in 2022, who they’re the first person in their family to pursue a creative career or got college degree, and so I meet so many people from so different backgrounds.

Russell Toynes:
I’ve had students as young as 19 and as old as 65, and what I’ve realized more than anything is that age, experience, life experience makes you a better designer. You can be these 30 under 30s, or these kids that are just like designing the heck out of stuff and are just killing it, and these young guns, and I think there’s like a whole young guns thing or whatever. I can appreciate that.

Russell Toynes:
But if you just haven’t seen enough design solutions, if you just haven’t been around the world enough, no matter how talented you are with the software, you just can’t be a great design problem-solver without that time. You’ll get better every single day, but it’s the people who are older in that sweet spot of like their late 20s, early 30s, early 40s, new collars who are going back to school that I’m starting to find out they have just enough life experience, they’ve seen just enough shit to say, “I don’t want it to be like that.”

Russell Toynes:
But also I’ve learned quite a bit from them of just the resilience. I’ve had students who school was the only safe spot for them. When they went home, they had to deal with outside real-world problems, whether it be addiction, whether it be homelessness, whether it be a number of things and school was a place for them.

Russell Toynes:
So it really taught me to kind of understand that we are all coming from different places, but we all have the same goal, and that is to be financially independent, hopefully, but to pursue a career in a very scary, scary realm where I tell my students, “You have the greatest job in the world. We get to create something that never existed, and we get to solve problems.”

Russell Toynes:
But it’s scary to pick a career where it’s like, “I’m going to do something where every single day I’m going to be judged, judged by people who have no education in this, judged by the masses.” That’s scary as hell, especially if you’re an artist who’s trying to pursue design.

Russell Toynes:
I tell them what makes me feel comfortable as a designer and not an artist is that I can objectively defend all of my work and all of my design decisions. That’s kind of my security blanket is that as long as I know why we did this, as long as I know the problems that we’re solving, I can defend that all day long, but it’s the subjective. It’s the stuff that just because I like it, because it feels good, because it’s me, because of this stuff, that’s the stuff that’s hard because it’s just judgment, and you have to accept that somebody just doesn’t like it.

Russell Toynes:
So I try to help them kind of create a bigger gap between those things and I said, “If you don’t want people judging your art, don’t put your art into your design.” Leave that for the special people that you choose to share that with, but use your design as a tool and do your problem-solving objectively. Then if you want to add a bit of your spice on it, do that, but understand that they may not like it.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s a word. That’s a word right there, that last part. I hope people caught that about if you don’t want to be judged for your… What’d you say? Say that again?

Russell Toynes:
Judged for your art, yeah.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Russell Toynes:
I mean, I think that’s the thing. I mean, I don’t know about you, but a lot of people get into design because someone told them that you’ll never make a career out of being an artist, and so they hear the word design and they think that. So I got a lot of artists in front of me every semester, and I’m like, “Separate your art from your design.” So that way you can be a better designer, and you don’t have to worry about changing who you are as an artist.

Maurice Cherry:
Something that I think I realized kind of early on with my studio was that a lot of designers design for other designers. Like, they’re not necessarily designing for the client. They’re designing because they want to be featured on Brand New, or Under Consideration, or something. Like, they’re designing for awards. They’re designing for accolades for their peers when the client may hate it.

Maurice Cherry:
Like, I’ve seen, oh, God, I remember, especially in like the late 2000s, there was so much design that was just the client hated it, but I did blank doing these kind of wild out-of-the-box stuff. And yeah, if it’s not in service of the client and that’s what the actual thing was for, like, yeah, it is arts that you’re kind of trying to put out there and then you’re putting this design sheen over it in that sort of way.

Maurice Cherry:
But that’s a word right there. When that clicked for me, that’s when like, honestly, the business and the work just became so much easier because it’s like just design for what the client is looking for. It may not look the best, but then that client is going to keep hiring you, and you’re going to keep getting paid, and your studio is going to stay in business so you kind of have to like… It’s a compromise in a way. I mean, I think once you get that relationship working, you can then sort of add a little something here and there, but it’s tricky. But that’s a real word right there about judging.

Russell Toynes:
I mean, you hit it on the head. Designers, especially in school, start designing for the approval of their peers, and they want to get these awards. They want to get recognized in design community, and at what cost? At the cost of, like you said, the clients or the vision?

Russell Toynes:
Sometimes if you’ve ever had to do something like wedding invitations, doing your own wedding invitations is the hardest damned thing. I went through like a whole existential mental breakdown designing my own wedding invitations because I started designing them, thinking about all my design friends that were going to be at the wedding, and what are they going to say when they get this in the mail, and you start really questioning yourself. I had to stop for a moment and just realize, “You’re designing it for you and your wife on this moment and this day. This is what you’re capturing. You’re not trying to get the approval of somebody else.”

Russell Toynes:
But you’re exactly right, and the problem with that is, is that if you forget who’s paying you. It’s not in that way of like, “I’m going to do bad work because this person’s writing me a check,” is “Are you solving their problems?” If you’re not going to bat for them and you’re only going to bat for yourself, then it’s art, and you’re doing it only for you. It’s selfish, and you’re asking them to pay you to do something that makes you feel good at a disservice to them.

Russell Toynes:
So, first and foremost, you have to serve. Like I tell people all the time, design is a service. Just like waiting tables, just like anything, we have a duty to serve them with the best solution possible, and sometimes it’s telling them that they shouldn’t have something.

Russell Toynes:
I give the analogy, forgive me for the crude analogy, but it just works, I tell people if you owned a restaurant and someone came to you and said, “I want a shit sandwich,” you wouldn’t serve them a shit sandwich. Not because you don’t make shit sandwiches. It’s because that if they ate a shit sandwich and you know it’s going to taste bad, they’re going to tell all their friends that you served them a shit sandwich and what people won’t know is that they asked for that.

Russell Toynes:
So the same thing goes with design is that if your client ask you for something that you know isn’t going to solve the problem, but you just give it to them, they’re going to blame you for when that problem still is there, and you just took their money. Where if you sit down with them and you say, “Hey, let’s go back real quick. Are you hungry?” And they go, “Yeah.” “Well, we serve a lot of other things. Have you tried this?”

Russell Toynes:
So I try to always reiterate to my students and my team and to anybody that we, as designers, have a duty to serve our clients, first and foremost, and to solve their problems. Sometimes that means pushing back on them and some of the design decisions that they want, and then sometimes it’s swallowing our own pride and realizing maybe this isn’t what we want it to be, but it still does solve the problem and in a different way.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look at where you’re at now in life with the studio and everything, is this how you imagine your life would look like when you were a kid?

Russell Toynes:
No, it’s way better. I am making 13, 14, 15-year-old Russell just, I mean, I’m just killing it. Like, 13-year-old Russell is like, “Dude, who are you? Who are you?” And I never would’ve saw this life for myself because I never saw it, to be honest. We grew up in a middle class-ish household, played with financial illiteracy and a lot of things that unfortunate that I never saw anybody doing the things that I do, living the life that I live so I couldn’t even have imagined it.

Russell Toynes:
So to look at where I’m at now… My nephew, today is his 13th birthday.I called him up and I said, “You remember what I told you when you were little, I said what happens when you turn 13?” And he goes, “I get to go to Disney World?” I said, “Yeah,” and he’s like, “You remember that?” I was like, “Yeah. You think I was just bullshitting?” I was like, “You know what I mean when you can talk about it, you can be about it.” I was like, “Yeah. It’s still pandemic right now so we got to figure out a date when we all feel comfortable.” I said, “But, yeah, you’re going to Disney World.”

Russell Toynes:
The fact that I can do that for my nephew and the fact that I can take my daughter and my wife and… We just went to Hawaii, and I took my whole family, 10 of us to Hawaii, and me and my wife, we were very appreciative of all the work that we have done and all the support of our family to be able to do this for them. The life that I live now and the team that I have and the work that I’ve done and the amazing people that I’ve met and the opportunity to teach and the opportunity to get up every day and create something new, I could have never imagined it, and I am so very thankful.

Russell Toynes:
I honestly attribute it all to design. Design, literally, saved my life and made my life. Like I said in the very beginning, going to school at ACC, literally, was the best decision I ever made. It set the trajectory of my life and set so many things in motion that, had I’d never gone to ACC, had I’ve not had the people in front of me and had the mentors and the educators in front of me, I would’ve never gotten to where I’m at now. So yes, in short, no, I would’ve never been able to imagine this life and, yes, design, I give all of it to.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? What kind of work do you want to be doing either through the studio, or personally, or anything like that?

Russell Toynes:
I mean, I don’t want to work, but I have plans and, hopefully… I love teaching. I really do. I think that I’m a natural educator and a sharer of information and experience, and so I hope to continue teaching on a wider scale.

Russell Toynes:
I mentor a few people now, and I’ve toyed around with the idea of professionally mentoring and offering those services on a regular basis. Right now, my mentees, I feel weird taking money from them so they just pay for my coffee. So I’m like, now it’s pandemic so they just send me… they’ve been owing me money for coffee.

Russell Toynes:
But I think that I have a lot to share with young professionals and budding entrepreneurs. I mean, designers, I think that through a longer relationship, a mentor relationship that I can help really guide people who might feel like they haven’t received the education and knowledge of the business of design and where to go and how to capitalize on opportunities.

Russell Toynes:
Then with the studio, as we were kind of talking about this kind of international work model, me and my wife have goals of finding a place that’s a little less tumultuous for people of color. Where that place is on earth, I’m not quite sure. I don’t think we found Wakanda yet, but we don’t know if the United States is necessarily our forever home. But our goal would be to really take our business global, honestly, so wherever we end up being, creating a team there, a local team there that would continue to do the work that we are doing and then have our current Studio Dzo team basically lead that team.

Russell Toynes:
So that would be less of a requirement of me and Elizabeth on our day-to-day, and then take this very seasoned team that has been with us for five years and turn them into leaders to guide maybe this international team to create the good work that we’ve been known to do. So that’s where I hope to see ourselves in five years is where I have five or six other people somewhere else in the world who Zoom in with my team here, and we’re just cranking out the same good work, both night and day. One team’s working while the other one’s sleeping.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more information about you, about the studio, about your work? Where can they find that online?

Russell Toynes:
Well, you can always find us at studiodzo.com. That’s studio, D as in dog, Z as in zebra, O as in Oscar, the D is silent, and you can find us on Instagram, studiodzo.

Russell Toynes:
You can follow me on Instagram, Russell Toynes, that’s Russell, two SSs and two Ls, never trust a one L Russell, and you can follow me on LinkedIn.

Russell Toynes:
Please, please, please check out aagd.co and see all the good work that we’re doing for our community there.

Russell Toynes:
Check out Austin Community College also. I know community colleges get a bad rap, but I have personally hired more designers from ACC than any other school from UT, from Texas State, from St. Ed’s. ACC, hands down, has a better design program and the designers come out stronger. So if you’re curious about that, if you’re looking to change careers, ACC might be an opportunity for anybody who’s local to the Austin area.

Russell Toynes:
Yeah, Russell Toynes, T-O-Y-N-E-S. There’s only a few of us out there. So if you just Google that last name, you’ll be sure to find me.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. Well, Russell Toynes, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I mean, I’ve heard of you for years. I probably didn’t mention that before we started recording, but I’ve heard about you for years, just like you were saying, my name has been kind of bandied about in the design community. I’ve heard about you for years. I was really excited to do this interview and really just kind of hearing your story, hearing your passion for design, and really even just your passion for just giving back to the community that has given so much to you is just super inspiring.

Maurice Cherry:
So I hope people, when they listen to this, they really can kind of feel where your passion comes from with this, and also see how they can maybe pay it forward in their own communities as well. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Russell Toynes:
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it, Maurice.

Reece Quiñones

If you’re in the know about the DC design scene, then this week’s guest probably needs no introduction. Reece Quiñones is a force for good when it comes to design, whether it’s in her role at The Hatcher Group as executive VP and creative director, or by teaching the next generation of designers as an adjunct professor at George Mason University. And she doesn’t stop there!

Reece talked to me about an average day for her at The Hatcher Group, and talked about growing up in DC and being exposed to architecture and art at a young age. She also spoke on her work experiences before The Hatcher Group, and gave some great perspective about being a long-time design educator, including what she feels design students want from the design industry these days. As a designer, you can never stop learning, and Reece Quiñones is a prime example of how you can use your skills to give back to your community!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right. So tell us who you are and what you do.

Reece Quiñones:
Hello. My name is Reece Quiñones, and I’m the Executive Vice President and Senior Creative Director for Hatcher, a PR marketing and design firm in the DC area. I’m also an Adjunct Professor of Design at George Mason University located in Fairfax, Virginia.

Maurice Cherry:
How has 2022 been going for you so far?

Reece Quiñones:
It’s been great. Very, very busy. We ended 2021 with a bang, and I can’t believe it’s almost the end of January already. It just seems like it’s flying by, but it’s been very good.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. You and I talked about this before recording, but it seems like the year started and there was no kind of ramping up into anything. Everyone just kind of got to work, which usually I don’t mind that, but it has been a very busy month so far.

Reece Quiñones:
Yes, it has. It has been busy, and I think we’ve been two years into the pandemic, so there’s a lot of fatigue out there too. So with everything, with the work continuing to ramp up, with everyone feeling really comfortable with this telework, it just seems there’s a lot of pressure. There’s a lot of pressure to still perform as companies are starting to think about how they’re going to return back to the office. I think a lot of people are really trying to say, “Hey, I’m good here.”

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, we’re at this, I think really interesting shift in, I want to say it’s uniquely American, but it’s really something that’s happening worldwide. But I mean, we’re in America, you and I. So I think it affects Americans differently because we have such a symbiotic relationship with work. So the fact that there are going to see these large structures around capitalism and work that have been upended because of the pandemic, companies are trying to see if hybrid is a good deal, if they should still stay remote. They’re selling office spaces, they’re buy more office spaces. Companies are really trying to figure out what’s next, and I think it’s difficult for them. But then also with workers, we’re realizing in general that the work is always going to be there, that we have more power as workers than we thought, and so we can advocate for greater, better work experiences. So this is a really transformative time overall.

Reece Quiñones:
I think so too. I think Hatcher has done a really great job. They just went flexible first. Meaning if you want to work from home, you can. If you want to work in the office, you can. And if you want to do both, you can. And just really looking at that, I think has been really something that has kept people in the office and just really just love the culture that we’ve created there. So I’m just happy that we were able to move forward with that.

Maurice Cherry:
Right now, are you able to go back into the office or you’re still kind of doing things remotely?

Reece Quiñones:
We can if we want to, but most people are remote, and it’s great.

Maurice Cherry:
What does a average day look like?

Reece Quiñones:
It’s busy. One of the things that we really worked on during the pandemic when we just immediately switched over to working from home just one day to the next… I was telling you a little bit earlier, I was the only holdout. I thought for some reason that it would only last a week and then I realized like, “Oh, wait, I don’t think this is going to last a week.” I went back to the office to get my chair, to get my desktop computer and all the things that I needed. But one of the things that we really worked on is communication. So work at Hatcher is really just this wonderful realm. My team in the morning, we always jump on chat. We say, good morning like you would if you just came in the office. This morning, one of my designers saved a dog that was kind of limping in the street and we were hearing about it. The play by play, but that’s the wonderful thing about it. So we have kept a wonderful relationship. That’s always really good.

Reece Quiñones:
It’s really busy. The way I form my team is really in a way that everybody can grow in the way they want to grow. So as a part of their goals, they say, “Hey, I’m more interested in DesignOps. Can I move in that role?” Or, “I’m really interested in becoming an art director? Can I move in that role?” So I try to ensure that all of my designers have the ability to learn from each other and to learn different types of design. So if I have somebody that’s mostly print that wants to learn UX, they can do that.

Reece Quiñones:
Yeah, just a really busy day. We have a great team of production that just keeps the trains moving. I have three art directors that help to ensure that the work looks great. In my senior creative role, I can normally formulate the strategy and just look at high-level creative. But it’s a busy day full of meetings, but it’s also one that’s really exciting and we’re able to really do some amazing things with amazing clients.

Maurice Cherry:
I think that’s really great that people are able to be flexible on the team like that. If there’s other things that they want to get into, they can do that, particularly I think within an agency kind of framework. I’ve worked largely with startups over the past five years and with those, it can be easy to just bounce from thing to thing because they maybe haven’t built out a robust network of people that work there yet. It’s mostly engineers, they may not have that much on creative. So if you want to jump into doing something else, you can just say, “I want to do something else,” and you can do it. With firms, it seems like it’s a bit more regimented because you’ve got creative directors and art directors and production designers, et cetera. But it sounds like it’s pretty flexible at Hatcher.

Reece Quiñones:
It is. It’s really important to me because I realized as I was coming up, the integration of design was really important. I know you remember a day that when there was a job description, they wanted everything like, “Oh, are you a website designer? Can you do print? Can you do this? Can you do that?” And we’re all looking at each other like, “Come on, really? What do you want?” So I did. I learned all those things. So over the years, I did UX, I did product design, I’ve done marketing communications design, advertising, environmental design, digital. So you’ve done all of it, and I realized that it really encapsulates the importance of design. That the foundational thing that you need to always know about design is basically that good design can transcend whatever medium.

Reece Quiñones:
So you need to understand how to design well, how to communicate that, how to understand your user, no matter if it’s a brochure or you’re working on a product. It’s still the same. You still have a user that’s going to use it that you need to consider. So that’s how I formulate my team and really pushing them to learn, “Hey, you want to do motion? Okay, let’s do motion. Let’s grab you, and let’s have you work on this project.” It just really grows the team so quickly and allows us to have more people that can do a certain type of task.

Maurice Cherry:
So given that, how do you approach a new project if seems like designers can be that flexible to bounce between disciplines like that?

Reece Quiñones:
My production team have learned… Again, we still have kid designers that might be really good at motion, or really good at long-form reports or annual reports, et cetera. Then we also know what designers want. I might have a designer who have asked, “Hey, I really want to work on an infographic,” and so we’re like, “Great.” Depending on the project, depending on the level that’s needed for that project, sometimes I do need a senior designer to work on a project. Sometimes I need an art director to work on the project. Sometimes it’s a team. We gather together, we look at all the projects and we assign them based on who can best deliver that project. Then if we have somebody that wants to learn, then they are also put on the team as well. And then from there, we schedule out and have a meeting, a launch, and the work gets done, and it’s always at a high quality. That’s something that I’ve been known for, for my students as well, as well as my staff, that quality is important.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look at your work, what would you say is the hardest part about what you do?

Reece Quiñones:
I love design so much. It’s really a hobby as well when I’m in my off hours. So as I’m looking over what the hardest part is, is just making sure that… I think it’s more on the client side. So it’s just making sure that they understand our process and they understand the whys in the decision making that we have. The world is so much more design savvy because of media, because of video, social media. They’re seeing good design on an every basis. Several times a day, they’re just seeing good design come to them.

Reece Quiñones:
So a lot of clients will come with preconceived notions on what they think will be appropriate for their project, and sometimes it’s not. Understanding the user, understanding the metrics, understanding the goals and the KPIs they have on the project. So sometimes I have to sit and kind of explain why we came up with a certain direction for them to understand why it works. I will say, even though that is the difficult part, it 99.999% of the time works because when you use design, when you use the foundations of design, the theories of design, and you explain it back to the client, then they’re like, “Oh, I get it. Great.” Because that’s why they’re hiring a firm for. So I think it’s the hardest part, but it’s also really rewarding as well.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s so interesting now, because clients, like you said, they’re exposed to more or we’re just all exposed to more through television or streaming or whatever. They’ll come with these very elaborate ideas and oftentimes it’s like a therapy session in a way where you’re trying to get to what the actual thing is that they’re trying to do so they don’t get so caught up in the visuals or the presentation. Or just letting them know that maybe the visuals and the presentation you’re looking for, maybe you can’t get that on your budget, but if there’s a certain feeling you’re trying to evoke, then maybe we can get there by doing these other things. And so it is very much this kind of push-pull process with clients sometimes.

Reece Quiñones:
Yeah. Always. Always. But you know what? It’s a rewarding thing. Our firm really is mission forward. We focus on education and opportunity and environment. So for us and just so much more, education is one of our large areas as well. With every single client, even though there’s that push-pull, there’s always this satisfaction because everything we’re doing is really to help them with their mission. At the end of the day, no matter how hard it is, you go home happy or rather you shut off your computer happy since we’re at home now. But yeah, it’s just a wonderful place to work.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s switch gears here a little bit. I know you’re a native of the DC metro area. I’d love to kind of learn more about what it was like growing up there for you.

Reece Quiñones:
Yeah, absolutely. Actually I was born in Puerto Rico. My family’s from there. Have no accent because we came when I was two, and we moved to Silver Spring and throughout the years I’ve moved to several areas in Silver Spring. But I’m still here, and I love it.

Reece Quiñones:
The DC area is really a melting pot. I think out of the top 10, there are two cities, maybe three cities that are the most diverse in the country within the DC area. So it was really different. When you grow up in the ’70s, you’re in school and you have 63 countries represented in your school. That was the school I went to. 63 countries. We had 63 flags in our school. Yes, it was very different. It was very different. The older I got and the more I traveled, the more I realized that the DC area is so special. It is so special. I haven’t found a place that feels like it where you can have friends that look completely different from you, speak a different language, and nobody looks at you twice. No one. Like no one. They just don’t look at you twice, because that’s normal.

Reece Quiñones:
Of course being in the DC area, there’s also almost like a different economy as well too, because you have the government here. And this is one thing that I think people who grow up in the DC area need to realize as designers and just people, that when hardships happen around the country, they’re not quite as hard here because you have the government here and the government can’t shut down. So when 2008 happened, just traveling around the country, you could see so many areas with malls closed and strip malls closed and in the DC area, there were still open. The malls aren’t doing it quite as well now, but… So it’s always important for designers and creatives to just always learn and always see outside themselves. Just don’t live in a bubble, but always look outside of your area. See how other people are living and experiencing the same things you are because it’ll just make you a better strategic designer in terms of how you can deliver to the audiences you need to reach.

Maurice Cherry:
So growing up around all this diversity and this extremely multicultural school. I mean, 63 countries in one school, growing up is a lot. Were the arts and design kind of a big part of your childhood? Were you exposed to that a lot?

Reece Quiñones:
I was exposed to art in terms of drawing, and that was really nice. Our school had a really wonderful art program as well as high school. I was introduced to photography. I would make posters and I would draw, but I actually never heard the term graphic designer at all. I went to college first for architecture, and I got into one school, but decided that architecture wasn’t quite for me. So I graduated Maryland with an art degree because at that time, I found out later their design program was closed. But I had an art degree out of Maryland, and I still didn’t know the term graphic designer. So I decided to go back to school. I went to Montgomery College just to get a two-year degree in multimedia and design. So that’s the first time I heard design with multimedia and I was like, “Okay, this is cool. Let me take it.” And I just happened to take an elective called Quark.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh wow.

Reece Quiñones:
Yeah. I just happened to take it because I had electives to take and I was like, “Quark. Hmm. I wonder what this Quark is.” And that’s the first time I saw graphic design because it was graphic design, I think like 120, and it was like Quark 101.

Reece Quiñones:
I took Quark and I was in the class and I remember just having such a good time. I mean, I was going for it. I was making newsletters. I mean, it was fun. Our screens were only like 15 inches and that was like state-of-the-art back then, because computers had just come in the scene just about three or four years earlier. They kind of became mainstream. And so I was in class and the professor, I will never forget him. Professor [inaudible 00:20:48], he looked at my work one day and he’s like, “You’re really good at this.” And I was like, “Good at what?” And he’s like, “Ah, good at this.” And I was like, “What is this?” I was like, “What is this? I’m just making a newsletter.” And he’s like, “Oh dear God.” He’s like, “Can somebody tell this child what class she’s in?” And somebody’s like, “Graphic design.” And I was like, “Graphic design?” And he’s like, “Yes, you can do this for a living.” And I said, “Wait, what?”

Reece Quiñones:
And at that moment I knew everything was going to be okay. I had found my passion. I really knew that it was going to be okay. I took every single graphic design class I could from him especially, and I graduated and I got my first job as a graphic designer with the Gazette newspapers, which was owned by The Washington Post at that time. And that’s how I got my start.

Maurice Cherry:
I’m curious about Quark. I want to go back to that because that’s a very… You said that and my mind immediately went to like… I don’t know if this is probably the right timeframe. I’m guessing this is like mid ’90s probably?

Reece Quiñones:
You are exactly right. You’re exactly right.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Reece Quiñones:
It was ’94.

Maurice Cherry:
I’d have to research. I don’t even know if Quark is still like a thing now, but I remember first getting into Quark. I was in… Let’s see, ’94 I’d probably just got into high school. So yeah. I remember using Quark and Adobe PageMaker because I designed my high school’s newspaper or redesign my high school’s newspaper. Because before that we were using or they were using… And this is because I grew up in the sticks, but also I think just because publishing hadn’t reached digital fully yet everywhere, but we were still doing mimeographs.

Reece Quiñones:
Oh wow, yeah. Yep. No, no. You laugh, but my first job, we were waxing down the pages of the newspaper on flats. So it really was the turn of graphic design becoming more digital to it being more mechanical. So using Exacto knives when we needed to change a word.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Reece Quiñones:
But it was such good experience. So I love it.

Maurice Cherry:
And it’s so interesting because you’re… I mean, you’re learning the tool and you’re learning how to do this. There’s no real examples that you can look at. When I think about what designers can do now and how much is out there in terms of education, they can go on YouTube. They could do LinkedIn Learning or they could do Skillshare or whatever. Like there’s so much out there. We were really winging it back then like just-

Reece Quiñones:
Oh my God.

Maurice Cherry:
… trying to figure it out.

Reece Quiñones:
We were. We were winging it and that’s why I love that class Quark, because the professor had a saying, he’s like, “Welcome to my class. Number one, do you know the Mac, or have you ever used a Mac?” And I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Some people raised their hand and he’s like, “Okay, more importantly, have you never used the Mac?” And I was about to raise my hand and the person next to me took my hand and said, “Do not raise your hand or he will kick you up.” And he kicked out two people.

Maurice Cherry:
Ooh. Wow.

Reece Quiñones:
So I would’ve never known, I should have been a graphic designer. But the one thing he said is, I’m going to teach you everything about this application, every dropdown, popup menu. And it’s up to you to create something that visually communicates an idea.” And he did. He taught us every single part of that. It was almost like a YouTube in the class. I think the way he taught really did inspire me to teach as well, but you’re right, we had nothing. We had absolutely zero. We were just going into it like, “Okay, here’s a blank page. Let’s go.”

Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And really trying to figure it out and just see how these tools work. You could read the instruction manual, but the instruction manuals were like these big thick Bibles. It was hard to get your creativity around it when the instruction manuals were just… Well, I guess that’s the other thing. There were instruction manuals. There were like printed books that you had to go through and try to figure this stuff out. So it was… Wow, what a time.

Reece Quiñones:
They were called Bibles.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. What a time.

Reece Quiñones:
Like what Bible?

Maurice Cherry:
Uh-huh (affirmative).

Reece Quiñones:
The illustrator Bible, I remember, I remember. I know back in the day.

Maurice Cherry:
Let’s talk about your early career after you graduated. Did you stay around in the DC metro area?

Reece Quiñones:
I did. I stayed around in the DC metro area and I worked for the Gazette newspapers. And I just remember just saying, “Hey, oh, I wish I could do more in design.” I just think that people are just put around you and you need to listen to their advice. And there was a coworker named Marie. She was awesome. And she was like, “Reece, you’re really talented. I don’t think you should be stuck here.” And I was like, “I don’t know,” this and the other. And she’s like, “You know what, I don’t want to hear you complaining unless you’re applying.” And I said, “What?” She’s like, “Well, don’t complain to me about that you want more, unless you’re applying for another job.” And I was like, “There’s no way I can get a job. I’m just one year out of school.” And she’s just like, “Well, I don’t want to hear it.” And she was serious. She wouldn’t let me here until I started applying. I applied and I got my first firm job at HR communications in the DC area. And when I told her, she’s like, “There you go.” She’s like, “I’m glad it worked.” And I was like, “What?” And that’s just how she was.

Reece Quiñones:
And so I never complained about a job ever again, unless I was doing something about right. That was really good advice. And from HR communications, I went to an in-house marketing firm, which was great, because it was marketing communications and I really learned a lot about marketing. Went to focus groups, helped conduct them. And that was just wonderful experience to learn how your work is really resonating with your audiences. And I think for first time, and this was still the ’90s, I realized that it’s not what I wanted. It’s what the customer needed that I needed to deliver. Design early on, was about your skill and how you could deliver it. But when I worked in that marketing group, I really learned that I need to listen to that audience and that was really eyeopening for me and just a wonderful experience there.

Reece Quiñones:
And then from there I went to another firm, and that firm was, I think the change in the quality of my work. This firm was called [inaudible 00:27:03]. And again, they were another marketing communications firm, but their designers hailed from around the world. They had a designer from Spain, a designer from Korea, and one from the Philippines and all over. And what was amazing was this being the ’90s, I thought I knew all the programs. They’re the ones that taught me that, “Hey, oh my goodness, your program can actually merge with other programs.” And that’s when I learned that you could actually merge your files, and get this, from Illustrator into Photoshop. You could merge your layer files into… And that was way back in the day. It just changed the way I could design because now I could make montages that you could only see in magazines where you’re just like, “How’d they do that.” I’m like, “I don’t know how they do that.”

Reece Quiñones:
And so they taught me all these really deep tricks and tips about the actual programs that I think really changed the quality of my design. And again, just really an amazing group of very talented designers. I remember when I got that job, I interviewed for it three times. And the first time I went, the owner was like, “You’re good, but you’re just not what we need. It’s not quite what we need.” And I was like, “Okay.” I was like, “Can you tell me about my work? What is it that you like, what is it that you don’t like? I don’t have an ego. Let me know how I can improve.” He told me, he’s like, “I like this, but our quality has more depth. It has more layering.” I was like, “Okay, that sounds great.”

Reece Quiñones:
So I went back and I kept designing, adding more things into my portfolio. About three months later they called me in. And at that time I told them, “Well, I have a new job. I’m not going to come in.” And they’re like, “Just come in. Let’s just have a chat.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ll just have a chat.” So I went and showed them a couple more pieces and he’s like, “Oh wow, you listened.” I was like, “Well, of course.” I was like, “I love your work.” I was like, “Of course I listened.” And he’s like, “Hmm. All right. Hmm.”

Reece Quiñones:
So he had me come back to talk to the art director and I realized at that time they were trying to have me leave the job that I had just started. And I wrote a list why I should stay at the job where I was or why I should go. And I realized that even if I stayed in this new firm for six months, the level of work that would come out of it would be so much more than I could ever get at the firm that I had gone to. So I decided to go. The only job that I have ever been in less than a year, but it was life changing. It was honestly life changing.

Maurice Cherry:
Now after that, is that when you ended up joining ASCD?

Reece Quiñones:
That is correct. That is correct. That firm hit the dotcom era. The early 2000s where all the dotcoms kind of lost their funding. And that was 90% of our work. So the firm shut its doors and I was left without a job. And I was like, “All right.” I was like, “Okay, what are we going to do here?” And I told myself, “Because now you have eight designers looking for work that each have the level of quality you have…” So I started looking for work and there were jobs that had a little bit more technical motion, people were getting into flashback then. And so I would just refer other designers and they would be like, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much,” because the job wasn’t right for me.

Reece Quiñones:
But I also told myself, “I’m going to look for any job. It doesn’t matter.” And I applied to a role for an in-house designer with an in-house agency. They called themselves an in-house agency. And that was kind of in the early 2000s. And that was rare to have a team of designers that would call themselves an in-house agency. So I went, I tried and I looked.

Reece Quiñones:
And the work, I was like, “Oh my gosh, what are you guys doing here?” I realized that they were a midsize publisher for educational book and products. And I was like, “This is amazing work. I’ve never done a book before.” So I showed my portfolio and I got the job. It was such an incredible experience, designing books and just growing within that environment, that I stayed. I also had a wonderful manager. And it’s true, you stay at a job where you have a great leader. And so he saw leadership potential within myself and would give me opportunities to lead projects. And then I started leading web projects, and then I started to lead applications. So product manage. It’s a wonderful experience where I was able to do everything from… Could design applications, as well as apps towards the end of the 15 years. Could design websites, online store, hundreds of books, just everything, run the gamut, including their large annual conference. So I would do the branding around the entire annual conference. And then through the years, I got promoted four times.

Reece Quiñones:
So it was just a wonderful opportunity to grow. And I was on vacation when that was a thing, when you left the… I got a call from a recruiter at LinkedIn for a position and I remember it just wasn’t right. I was happy where I was. And I said thank you and the recruiter said, “Well, just take a look at our job description online.” And I said, “Sure, sure. I’ll go ahead and do that.” And so I clicked the link and here I am in France and I’m scrolling down, I’m scrolling down. I was like, “Yeah, I don’t think this is right.”

Reece Quiñones:
And then there was in LinkedIn, at least back then, there was a title: Other jobs like these. And I was like, “Okay, so another job like this.” So I started looking at those jobs and there was one job there and it was The Hatcher Group. And I was like, “Huh, let me just read it.” And I was like, “Oh, they’re looking for a senior VP of design. Hmm. All right. Let’s take a look at what this looks like.” And it looked good. It was everything I was doing now. And I was like, “This is good,” but they really wanted to grow what they had as a design team. So they only had one designer and an intern and they were mostly a communications firm, QPR firm at that time, and they really wanted to grow it into more.

Reece Quiñones:
And so I’m reading the description and there’s one line and that line stuck out to me. And that line was, “Above all, we’re looking for someone who is kind.” And I was like, “Whoa.”

Maurice Cherry:
Wow.

Reece Quiñones:
I was like, “Whoa.” Yes, “Wow. Who looks for somebody who is kind? This is awesome.”

Maurice Cherry:
Especially at an agency.

Reece Quiñones:
Especially at an agency. I was like, “Well, if I’m going to go somewhere, let me go to a place where they want somebody who’s kind. I think I’m kind, but I know they’re kind because they’re looking for someone who is like them.” So I knew that just from the job description. And so I applied and I got the job. And so that was four years ago and we’ve grown from one designer and one intern to a team of 16. So we’re doing some great things and I have an amazing team.

Reece Quiñones:
I focus on hiring diverse designers. I think it’s important. I think a lot of firms run into trouble when they don’t hire diverse designers because we can check with each other and say, “Hey, does this work for this audience?” Because you don’t have that lived experience. And that is very critical for me, but what it does too, is it teaches the other designers how to have a critical, but worldwide view of work that we’re doing, especially because we’re working with very sensitive topics as well in terms of education and the environment and equity within those spaces. It’s just really important to understand how the images that you use, the icons that you use, even the way it’s placed, how that reads to your intended audience and if it portrays them fairly. That’s actually something that we focus on.

Maurice Cherry:
I want to go back briefly to ASCD. I mean, that was such a large part of your career. You were there for 15 years.

Reece Quiñones:
I was.

Maurice Cherry:
When you look back at that time, is there anything that really stands out to you that you remember the most?

Reece Quiñones:
Oh, absolutely. We had a wonderful team. It’s where I learned how to manage. It’s where my boss gave me the opportunity to take his job as he was promoted into a larger role. And it’s also where I learned to ensure that your designers can grow in the way that they want to grow. Instead of keeping people siloed into one area, I learned that it works well. It works so well for that team. We were so productive and people grew exactly where they wanted to and they became designers first, and then they learned the mediums second. So that’s where I learned that.

Reece Quiñones:
Quality was actually something that was so key to that team and to my boss. And I learned that quality is actually something that happens when the whole team works together as a unit, when everybody helps each other. And so I also hire people that don’t have egos, because we really do critique each other and help each other grow and ensure that everything that comes out of our shop has the quality that the customer expects, the client expects. But most important, I learned how to manage. I learned that if you treat your people like you’re equal, like people, you’re not their parent and you shouldn’t be, but you treat them like you’re equal. And if you’re having a problem with someone, just have a conversation and say, “Hey, what’s going on? Is everything okay? How can I help you? You tell me how I can help you.” Then you have a team that will come to you first. If anything goes wrong, my team just comes to me and say, “Hey, here’s what went down.” And then I’m like, “Okay. So how did you fix it?”

Reece Quiñones:
So we work through the solutions and we grow people. And I think that that is such a wonderful quality that I loved during the 15 years. I loved being able to go to my boss and say, “Here’s how I screwed up. Here’s how I think we should fix it. Do you agree?” And nine times out of 10 he did, “Oh yeah, that’s a great call. And you know what? It’s okay. We all screwed up sometimes.” And so I managed the same way and I think it’s really important that folks feel free to grow and to make those mistakes because that’s how you get exceptional designers. And I have exceptional designers. So I’m a very lucky person.

Maurice Cherry:
I mean, definitely sounds like to be able to have that level of openness among the team like that, that really takes really, I think depthful but also very skillful kind of just management. And with being at ASCD as long as you have, being able to really learn that in that environment has definitely helped out with what you’re doing at Hatcher.

Reece Quiñones:
Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%.

Maurice Cherry:
Now you also are a design educator. We’ve had several design educators here on Revision Path. You’re an adjunct professor at George Mason University where you’ve been since 2008. Tell me about your time teaching there. I’m curious, what are you teaching now?

Reece Quiñones:
Actually now, I start next week. I am teaching UX design as well as design principles and theory. So methods and principles, which is really the theory of design. It’s their first studio class where they learn how to design. And it’s one of my favorite classes. I’ve taught it since 2008 and I love it. I love it. I love it so much. And I love the outcome of not only the program and the students. About a fourth of my staff are my former students.

Maurice Cherry:
Oh really?

Reece Quiñones:
Oh absolutely. Oh absolutely. I snag them when I can. Absolutely. I kind of fell into teaching…

Reece Quiñones:
One of the wonderful parts of working with the in-house firms is that they have lots of benefits. ASCD had tuition reimbursement, so I was like, “Hey, why don’t I get my M.F.A. in design?” And I found a program that had most of their classes at night in the University of Baltimore. I applied and got in, and I went through that there. I learned and worked with the head of the design program at George Mason, and one day I was just sitting around and he said, “You know, I think you would be a really good professor.” And I said, “Oh no, not me. There’s no way,” because I grew up with a stutter. Just learning how to speak fluently was just really hard for me. And even now, even though I now have lived a little bit more than half my life without the stutter, I still can hear the struggle. So I just doubted myself so much and he just left it alone.

Reece Quiñones:
Years later, he called me and he said, “Hey, how about that teaching gig that I talked to you about?” I was like, “Oh, it would be wonderful, but… I don’t know.” He’s like, “I really need you.” And I said, “Oh, I don’t know.” He’s like, “Why don’t you call me tomorrow? Think about it.” I said, “Okay.”

Reece Quiñones:
The next day, I called him. I couldn’t sleep that night. I was so nervous about teaching. I just couldn’t sleep. And so I said, “You know what, I know it’s a good opportunity. It’s hard to get in, but I just don’t think I can do it.” And I left him a message and he didn’t answer me back. So I kept texting. The day after, he called me and said, “Hey, I got your message. I’m sorry I got it late. I already put your name in and I can’t change it.” And come to find out, he could have changed it. But I thank him every day. His name is Don Star. I thank him every single day for tricking me into a teaching job because the first night I taught, I realized, “I love this. This is so amazing.” And you just get this vibe when you teach.

Reece Quiñones:
My mom was a teacher and she told me, she’s like, “When one of your students learns how to read, your whole body gets this shiver. You just get this vibe that, ‘Wow. What I’m doing is making a difference.'” And she’s right. I got that same vibe when I had a student who really understood a concept, understood a theory and was able to apply it and created something that looked so beautiful. And I was like, yes. And I got hooked. I got to teaching.

Reece Quiñones:
So I just got hooked to teaching. And with that first class, which was the design methods and theories class, I just had a great time. I kept teaching. There’s other classes I teach as well. I’ve taught typography, infographic design, motion graphics, and I just have a blast with it all. Like I said, I think that teaching is so important and learning how to teach those foundational skills are the critical part that I think is missing in some programs as well. Because I also interview and hire and look at hundreds of portfolios all the time, and just those little things that you can see throughout is what I teach. The things that people don’t get, or they don’t understand how to really put their work together or how to continually improve their work. So I just have a great time with it.

Maurice Cherry:
How would you say things have changed since you started teaching there? Have you grown as an educator?

Reece Quiñones:
I have. I don’t like grades, though I have to grade folks, but I love projects. And so my projects have gotten more complex. They also have introduced a digital aspect to them because everything now has a digital aspect. Even if you do a report, we’re asked to do social media or a little motion graphic video that will help to launch that report. So I think I use what I see at work as a part of how to improve the way I teach. So when I see shifts in the industry or in the way clients are asking for work, I also change how I teach to mirror that, to ensure where that my students are ready for hire as soon as they graduate

Maurice Cherry:
From your perspective, and again, you’ve been teaching since 2008 and you’ve mentioned these changes, what do design students, and I guess design graduates also, what do they want from the design industry?

Reece Quiñones:
That’s actually a good question. I’ve had a couple students, especially during the pandemic really kind of reached out for co-mentoring because we haven’t been in person for two years. So they want to be ready. They want to be ready to get a job. They want to ensure that they’re not looked over. They really want to understand how their work applies in the real world. And that’s actually something that I do. As a part of every single class, I also take one class period to teach them salaries. What are you worth? What are you worth when you go out? Here’s the salary range. Here’s how you can adapt it for the DC area. Or let’s say you were going to New York, here’s how you adapt it. Let’s say you were going to Chicago, or let’s say we’re going to Alabama or to Mississippi. Here’s how you can change and see what you’re worth and how much you can ask for.

Reece Quiñones:
I also go over portfolios. I’m like, “These portfolios work and here’s why.” I go over resumes. “These resumes work and here’s why.” And I explain to them how to get ready for the real world. Why it’s important that their work is good. How they can self-edit to ensure that you don’t have one piece that looks really bad with work that looks really good, because I see that all the time. When I’m looking at the students’ portfolios, I’m like, “Why did you add that invitation?” And they’re like, “Well, because I don’t have an invitation.” I’m like, “But do you think it looks good?” They’re like, “No, it’s not my best work.” I’m like, “Well, I’m going to judge you on that.” And they’re like, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, as a creative director, if I look at this, I’m going to say somebody helped you with everything else. And the one that looks bad is the one you did on your own.”

Maurice Cherry:
Hmm.

Reece Quiñones:
And they’re like, “Oh.” I said, “Mm-hmm (affirmative).” I was like, “Take that.”

Reece Quiñones:
So I help them learn how to edit their work because as you’re coming up, you always have a couple of duds in there where you’re… They’re not horrible, but they’re just not the level of quality as some of your other work. So learn how to edit because your portfolio is the way that someone’s going to hire you. I really help them with that. And I think that’s what they’re really looking for. They’re looking for help to ensure that they can get a job, because we all know how it feels when you graduate and then you have to like make it on your own.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Reece Quiñones:
That intense feeling of fear like, “Oh dear God, I’ve got to pay for everything myself.” And back then it was harder because you literally left home. Nowadays you can come back, things are changing a little bit. But back then, they were just like, “Okay, you’re gone. Bye college. You’re gone.” But kids still feel that. They still feel that fear. So just helping them know that these things can help them. And then I also do mock interviews and I do them in class so that people can see how I answer questions. I tell them, “Just ask me anything.” And I’ve gotten some really tough questions for them to see how I answer that so that they can really have a leg up when they go to their first interview.

Reece Quiñones:
And even afterwards I will help students. I give them my email address. I’m like, “Hey, you want a mock interview? Let’s do it. You want me to look at your portfolio? Let’s do it.” Just the other day, I had a student who was so nervous about an interview that they had, catchy with Deloitte, and they were just so nervous. And so they just wanted me to go over again… They just wanted to practice and they wanted to go over it one on one. So I took some time to help that student and they reached out and said that they got the job and I was so excited because there’s another level that’s hard here to the pandemic. Right?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Reece Quiñones:
So they just have that nervousness going out. I take the time for that too, because I think it’s important and I wish I had that when I was first coming out. And so I make sure that I’m there for them so that they don’t have to feel like they’re going out alone.

Maurice Cherry:
Well, I think what you’re doing with reviewing their portfolio and resumes and talking about salaries and doing mock interviews, that stuff is so, so, so important for designers just to get out there and know what it is that they have to do to try to compete in the marketplace, but also to position themselves in the best possible light.

Reece Quiñones:
Absolutely.

Maurice Cherry:
I’ve done some work in the past with the art institutes, particularly the Art Institute of Atlanta here in Atlanta. They sort of do this thing every year where they bring in people from the local design community and they have a dinner at the school. And what they’re doing with that is one, just trying to meet practitioners out in the city, but also to get a sense of like, “What do we need to be teaching students? What out there are you seeing in the market that we need to inform them of?” Whether that’s about upcoming technologies or certain-

Reece Quiñones:
I love it.

Maurice Cherry:
… design trends or things like that, to try to stay current and keep up on top of things. It’s funny, you’re talking about your adjunct experience and I’m thinking about, I taught adjunct… Oh, this was 2012 I think. Like 2011, 2012, I was teaching like a principles of web design course-

Reece Quiñones:
Oh, love it.

Maurice Cherry:
… as an adjunct. And what I tell you, it was so dated… Well, first of all, it was a BIS course. It was a business information systems kind of major. So it already wasn’t like technically really designed. You were just teaching business students enough design to sort of get by, I guess. But the curriculum was so old.

Reece Quiñones:
Oh.

Maurice Cherry:
Like when I started, they had students learning how to design web pages using tables. And I’m like, this is 2011, 2012, sometime around that.

Reece Quiñones:
I learned tables in the ’90s.

Maurice Cherry:
Me too. I learned tables in the ’90s too. And I’m like you have to teach because this was in that period where CSS layout design of course was the norm at that point. I remember working at AT&T in 2007-ish and we made the switch from tables to CSS. I mean, you want to talk about seeing grown people cry at work?

Reece Quiñones:
I know. I remember that switch. It was emotional for many.

Maurice Cherry:
In this teaching thing, I remember going to the Dean and like petitioning to rewrite the curriculum because I’m like, “You’re setting these students up to fail-”

Reece Quiñones:
Absolutely.

Maurice Cherry:
“… if you’re teaching them how to design in tables and then they go out there in the world trying to get some design jobs to say they have some HTML experience and it’s this dated. We’re not setting them up in the best light.” Eventually they did let me rewrite the curriculum. So I did teach them basic CSS and stuff, but I’m thinking like, “What if I didn’t?” Or what if another educator was just like, “Oh, this is what I’m teaching? Okay.” And just went with it. So the fact that you’re extending that out, you’re doing way more than usual. I mean, I certainly commend you for that.

Reece Quiñones:
Oh thank you. But now, what I was going to say is that that’s really important and that’s one of the things that I love about George Mason. Is that with the curriculum that I’m able to continually update it. So every single semester I update everything to ensure… Including my samples, because I want to make sure that the students have the latest and the greatest of how you can incorporate design into all this new technology. And it’s just really important to be able to do that because it’s true. Just like you said, if you don’t do that, you are setting them up to fail from the beginning and school’s not cheap, right?

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.

Reece Quiñones:
Let’s make sure they have all the right tools so that they can go out and live their best life.

Maurice Cherry:
What is the design community like for you at this stage in your career?

Reece Quiñones:
Oh, it’s awesome. The DC area, as well as the Baltimore area, because I’m still connected through school, they have such a strong design community that they overlap as well at times, but it’s really strong. I’m a part of AIGA, I volunteer. I am on The Continuum Fund, which is a scholarship fund for underserved designers, and it’s just wonderful. It’s great to grow with designers and also bring up new designers and seeing them grow in leadership roles as well. It’s actually something that’s important because no matter how large your city is, the design community is actually small. And that’s the thing that I think that people need to understand. Like I’m connected with so many people around the city and know when they’re looking for someone, I can refer other people. And that’s why it’s important to always get connected to the community where you are, because it’s a great way to help you find jobs or just to grow and design or just to give back, to mentor or to help an upcoming student or designer that joins a group. So I encourage everybody to do that if they can.

Maurice Cherry:
And you’re a recent DC design fellow. Congratulations on that.

Reece Quiñones:
Thank you so much. I was shocked and honored to be named an AIGA Fellow. It’s something that’s given to just a few people and not every year. And for me to be chosen, I was very humbled and just very gracious. It just makes me want to triple my efforts in terms of what I’m doing and teaching and mentoring, because I realize now that it’s made a difference. The power of just winning that award is just realizing that you can make a difference. You can help your community just by giving back. It was a really fun experience.

Maurice Cherry:
Who are some of your influencers? Who inspires you?

Reece Quiñones:
It’s actually everyone around me, but including, and I think the most important are my students. I am the creative director I am today, I am the leader I am today because of them. They inspire me to push further. They inspire me and grow… They just have just great ideas that they use on their projects, that they come forward, that they ask, “Hey, can I do this?” And I’m like, “Hmm, I don’t see why not. Let’s have a go.” And so they keep me always growing, learning and searching for new ways to apply design. And they inspire me every day. I think that’s why I’m hooked to learning and I’m hooked to teaching because basically I learn from them. As much as they learn from me, I learn from them.

Maurice Cherry:
What are you the most excited about at the moment?

Reece Quiñones:
I think I am the most excited about how technology is informing design, how we can apply design to new things. For example, augmented reality. So AR, VR and how I can apply that within my teaching, as well as within my own firm. I love how the industry and how design has to continually change. I think that that keeps us fresh. It keeps us learning. It keeps us growing. And that’s important. I mean, I think creativity really requires the pursuit of experiencing learning and observing as much as you can. One of the things I always say is you cannot design what you don’t know. So you have to continually be curious and open-minded and just always be a student. And just continuing to learn, not only in your field, but what’s around it, and be ready for it so that you can continue to visually communicate ideas to your clients.

Maurice Cherry:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years? I mean, with what you’ve got going on with teaching, as well as your work at The Hatcher Group, it sounds like you’ve got a very, very bright future in terms of what you want to.

Reece Quiñones:
I’m always living in the present. Right now, I am so excited with the work I’m doing at The Hatcher Group. I recently got promoted to executive vice president, which actually allows me to do a lot more business development, not only with the firm, but with our clients. So it’s a wonderful place for me to be. In five years, I can tell you, as long as they’ll have me, I will still be teaching. That I do know. I love it. It’s how I actually relax after a long day, is I teach. And the moment I go in and I say, “Hi class, how are you doing?” Like all the stress leaves. And we just have a great time and we laugh and just learn together.

Reece Quiñones:
In terms of what I do, I hope that I’m always going to be tied to design in some way, the next five years for me, just really… It incorporates me continuing to learn. I’m always looking at the next program. I know it’s weird, but I am looking at a doctor’s program. So I think it’s important for me to continue just growing and learning within my own field, and right now just doing what I do at Hatcher.

Maurice Cherry:
Just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more about you and your work and everything online?

Reece Quiñones:
Well, they can go to thehatchergroup.com as well as my own personal website, 09creative.com. And I am also on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/reecequinones

Maurice Cherry:
All right. Sounds good. Well, Reece Quiñones, I want to thank you so, so much for coming on the show. I mean, just going through everything that you are doing with The Hatcher Group and with education and your background and everything. I mean, you’re someone that I think a lot of people in design industry can look up to. It’s so interesting before we recorded, you were talking about how you don’t know, or you didn’t know why you received the DC fellow award. And I’m like, I don’t see how you didn’t know considering how much you’ve been, not just a practitioner in design for a very long time, but also how much you’re giving back to the next generation of design through teaching-

Reece Quiñones:
Oh, thank you so much.

Maurice Cherry:
… and everything. So I am so glad to have had you on the show and to share your story and I look forward to seeing what comes next. Thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Reece Quiñones:
Thank you so much. I had an awesome time.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world.

We accomplish this through graphic design, presentations and workshops around I-D-E-A: inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.

If you’re curious to learn how to combine a passion for I-D-E-A with design, check us out at brevityandwit.com.

Brevity & Wit — creative excellence without the grind.

Sponsored by The State of Black Design Conference

The State of Black Design

Texas State University’s Communication Design Program is excited to announce The State of Black Design Conference, a three day virtual event March 4-6, 2022.

This year’s theme is “family reunion”, and there will be over 50 amazing speakers, including author and educator Jelani Cobb, and world-renowned poet, activist, and educator Nikki Giovanni.

This year debuts the State of Black Design’s Resume Book initiative, so if you’re a Black design student, or you’re a Black designer looking for your next role, then listen up!

You will be able to submit your resume and your portfolio to the Resume Book, along with your institution of study and major if you’re a student, and recruiters and employers will have access to it before the event. If you’re interested and you want to be included in the Resume Book, send your info to blackdesign@txstate.edu with the subject line “Resume Book”. You have until March 3, 2022 to submit.

The State of Black Design Conference is brought to you with the support of the University of Texas at Austin, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, Microsoft, General Motors, Design for America, Civilla, IDSA, AIGA, and Revision Path.

Visit The State of Black Design Conference website for tickets. Hope to see you there!

Omari Souza

February is our anniversary month, and we’re kicking things off with an interview with design educator and researcher Omari Souza. Longtime listeners of the show may remember Omari’s first appearance on Revision Path back in 2017, and let me tell you, a lot has changed in four years!

We start off talking about Omari’s latest venture, the State of Black Design conference, and he went into the ins and outs of organizing it, and even gave a sneak peek on what to expect from this year’s event. He also spoke about teaching at Texas State University, his latest research focus, and the state of design education and how he’s grown as a designer. Revision Path is proud to work with State of Black Design, so you can definitely expect to see more of Omari’s contributions in the future!

Transcript

Full Transcript

Maurice Cherry:
All right. So tell us who you are and what you do.

Omari Souza:
Hey everybody. My name is Omari Souza. I am a professor of design and design research at Texas State University. And I also organized the State of Black Design conference.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you’ve been on the show before the first time you came on the show was back in 2017. How’s the year been going for you so far? This is 2022.

Omari Souza:
Man. To be completely honest with you with being in the middle of COVID these past three years all feel like one extended year. So it doesn’t even feel like I’ve started a new year yet. It just feels like I’m still ending 2019.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I guess it all has blurred together. I was online earlier today and I saw where people were making these comparisons, like January 2020 to January 2022, like how people were first starting to talk about the coronavirus and all that sort of stuff. But it does feel that way. I know a lot of folks now that are just trying to get their bearings so far. At the beginning of the year.

Omari Souza:
Yeah. That’s exactly what it feels like. It’s just being up and down, well, being up and down in terms of figuring out how you’re maneuvering through COVID and educating and working. Whether you’re at home whether you’re allowed to wear a mask or not wear a mask based off of how the population is doing with COVID at the moment, it’s all pretty tough.

Omari Souza:
And granted, I say that living in Texas, I know in some other cities and states that have taken it far more serious in the state that I’m in, things have been a bit more constant in terms of mask wearing and some of those other things, but it’s been a lot to adapt to.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And I know you’ve got a lot on your plate now because you’re also organizing an event while you’re doing all of this. You’re organizing this year’s State of Black Design, which begins next month. Tell me about how this event started and where you got the idea for it from.

Omari Souza:
It started in a lot of places in all honesty. I normally tell people that it started as a response to the George Floyd murder. There was a lot of civil unrest at the time and a lot of people wanted to have these conversations about race and the intersectionality of race with practice, regardless of what that practice was.

Omari Souza:
But also at that same time period and before there were a lot of designers in the BIPOC community that felt that they weren’t being represented at the majority of design related conferences. Whether it be HOW, or HOW Conference or several others, you would look at entire like 20, 30 person lineups, and maybe not see any person of color in that lineup, or maybe one or two, when in reality there was so much talent out there doing so much amazing things.

Omari Souza:
So this moment after George Floyd’s murder ended up being this huge boiling pot of emotion, a lot of the designers feeling like they didn’t have a space to be heard or to be seen, or that their contributions to the industry and to the field weren’t being recognized or appreciated. And there being this overall desire to learn more about how race is impacting these different pockets of society. So initial, I took that as an opportunity to hold something on my campus.

Omari Souza:
So what I thought was going to be on my campus, I created an Eventbrite page, hired a student to do some of the marketing material for us and anticipated we may only get a 100, 200 students that attended our program. Low and behold, we ended up getting roughly 4,000 people who registered for the event. And we’ve just been continuing since after realizing that there was a demand and really a need to have some of these conversations that weren’t happening prior.

Maurice Cherry:
That’s interesting about… Well, one, I guess the timing of all this came about in an interesting way, because one, it did, as you said happen, because you were hearing from so many people that there’s a lack of events around Black designers. And then of course the summer of 2020 was this big racial reckoning, so to speak, which I guess for a lot of people activated them into doing something and for you, this was one of those things.

Omari Souza:
Yeah. And it really felt nerve wracking but gratifying is actually put together. You were one of the folks that actually came out and spoke with the initial one. And wanted to make sure I take my time to thank you for that, because I know that you’re super busy and you sacrificed your time to speak at the events. But one thing that we all spoke about afterwards was the response that we got on Twitter from it.

Omari Souza:
There were studios that tuned in live and actually created visual graphics of what was being discussed. There were people that tweeted and sent personal messages about how they never felt so seen or heard in the field itself. There was just such heartwarming messages that were coming in response to this at a time period where there was so much anger and anguish. So it felt really good to put that together.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I remember seeing, I know Webflow was one company that did these sketch notes right along with it. And for those that are interested the 2020 event, I think it’s on YouTube, right?

Omari Souza:
Yeah. It’s on YouTube.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. And it was myself, it was Renee Reed, a couple other folks who had been on the Revision Path Podcast, but that was a really great event. It was just this one day thing that we all came together and spoke and it was a lot of fun. And I’m glad to see that you got that kind of feedback from it.

Omari Souza:
Yeah. I needed that as well. Timothy Brad Levis who’s also been on the show, spoke with me before programming, before I began planning the second event and he said to me planning a conference you typically do it in four stages. The first stage is, oh my God, I’m so excited. I can’t wait to do this second stage. Oh man, this is so much harder than I thought it was going to be.

Omari Souza:
The third stage is I can’t believe I agreed to do this. I’m never doing this again. What was I thinking? Then the fourth stage, once you start getting the response says, “You know what? It wasn’t that bad. I can do that again.” All the positive messages that I got at the time period, put the battery in my back to be able to do it again, the following year.

Maurice Cherry:
So given the popularity of the 2020 event, what can we expect from state of State of Black Design this year? Because you’re putting it on again.

Omari Souza:
So there are a couple of things that I am trying to do differently that I think people can be really excited about. The initial event was really my attempt to give people a space and a platform and not necessarily do so in a manner that felt control or contrived. I really wanted everyone to be able to speak their truth and talk in a way that other conferences haven’t allowed them to.

Omari Souza:
And I think that was a part of the success of the initial event. The sheer rawness of some of the discussions, the second event was really making an attempt to continue that on. But part of the response that I was getting was really from companies that were trying to figure out how do we then create this pipeline for designers of color, into industry that we are struggling to fund. So I used this event as a mechanism to create this pipeline.

Omari Souza:
I was going to use donations and sponsorships to keep the cost of the event free to students, but then leverage that money to pay our speakers as well as make attempts, to offer scholarships to students that are studying design as well. So for this event, the conversation that I had with a number of the sponsors and stakeholders was really along the lines of what are some of the areas that our participants can be best served going forward.

Omari Souza:
And one of the things we talked about is it’s great to have these avenues open up where they can interview then IBM, if they’d like to, or an Argodesign or materials or PayPal, Adobe, and everyone else that sponsored the event. However, especially considering that a lot of these participants are coming from programs that may not have the funding to give the same level of education within design and some other institutions or some folks are participating that are self-taught, it would be amazing to give some professional development opportunities.

Omari Souza:
So this year I’ve been speaking to a lot of folks about hosting workshops in order to teach the people that are tuning in some new skill sets that they can use to improve their portfolios or to add new weapons to their utility belt. When not to make a comic book fund to improve their skill sets on a day to day basis, something else that they can pull on to solve complex problems. Additionally, we’re speaking about hosting projects that can be worked on with particular employers to gain exposure to what particular assignments are like.

Omari Souza:
So not only can you interview, let’s say for example, with an NBC Universal, whom will also be a sponsor of the events, but they will also be giving competitions where you can design a movie poster for a film that doesn’t exist, but it then becomes an opportunity for you to engage with art directors in this particular industry and talk about potential internships or ways that you can improve that work. We’re also making steps to expand our target base.

Omari Souza:
And we’re beginning to invite and have additional programming for high school juniors and seniors. So if you are getting ready to go into a college and your visual creative in your high school, K through 12 education, which you don’t know what a career will look like as a designer. How to begin it, how to start searching for a community on campus or even the right campus or program to go to. We’re beginning this process of attempting to educate some of those students as well, to try to set folks up for the success that they’re looking for.

Maurice Cherry:
So it sounds like this expanding almost into this career fair. I mean, of course there’s going to be the different talks and stuff, but you’re doing also a lot around making sure students are set up with interviews and other opportunities to network with companies.

Omari Souza:
Yeah. I really want… I’m sorry. I’m backtracking. After the initial event, there were a lot of companies that, as I mentioned prior that were looking to find ways to diversify their workforce. And if that’s a discussion that they’re having, I want to be able to bring people to them, especially when a lot of the participants of these events are also saying that they would love to work for some of these fortune 500 companies.

Omari Souza:
However, I also want to make sure that I’m providing an avenue by which they can continue to improve the skillsets that they have in between this, the attending our conferences and in between their potential interviews for one position to the other. So, my hope is if a student who begins to attend from their junior year of high school takes advantage of some of the workshops that are there.

Omari Souza:
If they continues to attend these workshops and listen to these panels and interview with these companies that have been sponsoring their exposure and the connections that they would’ve made by the time they’ve graduated would put them further ahead than it would have if they’ve never attended and never worked on anything outside of what was in their classroom.

Maurice Cherry:
Who are some of the speakers for this year?

Omari Souza:
Man, we have a ton of great speakers this year. This year, we will be headlined by Nikki Giovanni, which I’m super excited about. We will also have Jelani Cobb who will be speaking. We will also have Anne Barry fellow Kent alum. That will be there. We will have Regina Gilbert, Lacey Jordan will be there.

Omari Souza:
Theresa Moses, Silus Monroe, Maryam Moma, Mike Nichols, Kalina Sales, Roberta Sampson, Raja Shaa, Trey Seals will be giving a workshop on type design. We will have Jennifer White Johnson. That’ll be hosting a panel on disability design. Kelly Waters will be there. Shelby Zinc from Microsoft will also be there as well, and this is just to name a few. The list is really extensive this year.

Maurice Cherry:
I was going to say, that’s a lot already.

Omari Souza:
Yeah, it’s an amazing list of people. And I I’m really fortunate that they have all been willing to participate in this.

Maurice Cherry:
It’s interesting, we talked about 2020 just earlier. One thing among many things that stuck out for me that year was just seeing how many Black designers found community online that year. I think because of events like State of Black Design and so many others that started that year. Black designers came around these events and really formed this sense of community. Have you felt that since the State of Black Design?

Omari Souza:
I feel like the year of the State of Black Design, there were so many things happening within the community and people attempting to build their own table. That I think that year in general, when the first State of Black Design happened, we also had Where Are The Black Designers hosted by Mitzi. Black Ignite, which was hosted just a couple months after that, by Heather Lee. Hughe also had their events as well as myself, which I believe was the last event of the year.

Omari Souza:
We were all in communication with one another, especially after our initial events happened. And we’ve all leveraged one another in order to keep everyone going. We each serve a different role, but have each come together as a family, just to keep things going. So for the second events, I know we had Jasmine Kent from HOW, Heather Lee from Black Ignite and Mitzi all sit on a panel together.

Omari Souza:
I’ve consulted with Mitzi and Heather Lee on a number of things that I was doing for Black Ignite Heather Lee brought me on to give a keynote. And I say all of this to say, there’s not only been a community in terms of the following, but the folks that have been attempting to lead these separate initiatives have also been coming together to assist one another. So it’s a fight and champion for the things that they view as important.

Omari Souza:
And I feel like that’s something that’s been extremely beautiful and powerful when considering three, four years ago, a lot of these spaces weren’t available. There was no State of Black Design or Black Ignite or Where Are The Black Designers and the followings for each have been extremely impressive.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. They really have. I mean, of course, for folks that have been following Revision Path around that time, I talked all about Where Are The Black Designers had Mitzi on the show and everything, but yeah, it is interesting seeing how all of that has… And I mean, I have to say it has come together very quickly. Even from my somewhat limited perspective of looking at the landscape of the design industry from 2013 to now and seeing how few events and things there were around black designers.

Maurice Cherry:
Even just media, like when I started Revision Path there was not any other podcast that were talking to Black designers about the work that they’ve done. And now of course, nine years later, there’s several others besides myself. But just to see how things have grown in such a very short period of time, I’m curious to know, why do you think these other events just don’t get it?

Maurice Cherry:
Because what I find interesting aside from the speed of all of this is how I don’t want to say how limited the resources have been, but y’all really pulled all this together from nothing. You put out a webpage or you put out a call on Instagram or something and you have thousands of people flocking to you registering, signing up for your event, spreading the word fostering community. And you see a larger slash other design competitions or events and things like that don’t even come close to that. Why do you think that’s the case?

Omari Souza:
I think it’s a number of reasons. Going back to my thesis research that I know we talked about in the initial interview, they’re a large percentage of Black college students that end up going to these. So they end up going to social serving programs because based off of the research I did in my graduate year of college, there are a lot of students that when choosing a major will choose majors that help them either contextualize things they’ve experienced or choose majors that help them advocate for others. And I think that advocacy piece for a lot of people comes off as being politic. I think with design, while it can be a tool that’s used for advocacy, it’s often communicated solely as a tool of luxury.

Omari Souza:
So even in terms of how conferences typically communicate themselves. So if you go to, not picking at any conference in particular, but if you visit Hughes site, it’s really all about how to learn the latest and greatest in designing for a fortune 500 company or a major firm that’s dealing with a fortune 500 company, but it’s never articulated.

Omari Souza:
It’s never really given any attention to areas that maybe of concern for people of color. And the reason being is that design always wants to come off as being apolitical. In my thesis research, I voted Melissa Harris Perry in her book Citizen.

Omari Souza:
She had the segment where she talks about whenever people think of politics. They’re often thinking about Democrats or Republicans when in reality, the art or of being political is really attempting to pull one person’s attention from one thing to something else. So if I’m trying to get you to look somewhere that you’re not currently looking, that happens to be political.

Omari Souza:
And then she then makes the argument that being Black in America is really a political act within itself because you’re consistently attempting to get people to recognize your humanity, so the discussions that we have at a lot of these events are not just about being a better designer or what you can do in the workspace, but it’s really these difficult discussions around the nuances of being marginalized.

Omari Souza:
How do you exist in a space being a Black person where you might be microagressed or the racism that you experience may not be as subtle all the time. It can be subtle, and sometimes it can be very direct, what can you do to protect yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically? What are the courses? How can other people be there for you to support you through these types of things? And in many cases, these are conversations that aren’t really had in your traditional conferences, but their topics of discussion.

Omari Souza:
And there there’re things that Black signers are speaking about whether or not these conferences are including them and not to mention traditional design programs typically tend to keep things very Eurocentric, and they don’t typically provide much room for cultural relativity or exploration into the cultures that a lot of people of they come from.

Omari Souza:
So if you now have workshops that are being done. So for example, Trace Seals will be giving his workshop. A lot of his work is predicated on designing typefaces of marginalized audiences. That’s not something that would traditionally be taught at a design school currently, but if it’s something that’s being provided at a workshop, it now becomes something that deals in that nuance and becomes interesting to people that have been marginalized.

Omari Souza:
That want to know more about that history but also how do I leverage that history and culture into my professional practice. Black Ignite, HOW Design, Where Are The Black Designers and the State of Black Design each give you an opportunity to have that conversation safely, and also learn to explore visually things that you may not see traditionally in the classroom.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, I will say each of those events also are very different. Like State of Black Design is this conference slash career fair Hughe is like a family reunion kind of feel almost Ignite, at least from what I’ve seen from Ignite is just a bunch of straight up short talks, almost like a, I forget the name of it. What’s it called PechaKucha. I might be mispronouncing that I’m…

Maurice Cherry:
But it’s sort of a series of short talks and things like that. And then you may have a conference that’s got more longer, more didactic talks or something. But no, I like that each of these events also has their own flavor. They all feed on each other. They work in concert, at least from what I see with other Black design events that are out there.

Maurice Cherry:
Like, of course the four that you mentioned, which are fairly new, that doesn’t preclude also the existence of Black In Design, which takes place at Harvard University or Creative Control Fest, which takes place in Columbus or it doesn’t shy away from those events. Or try to pit one against the other, it’s all one community, or at least it’s all one shared community. I should say. If you’re a black designer now this is probably the best time in history for you to attend events that specifically speak to you as a Black designer, like it hasn’t ever been, I think this good in terms of variety.

Omari Souza:
Yeah. At least not that I can recall. And yeah, I feel that wholeheartedly. It’s really interesting, the entire idea of these separate organizations that really are in support of one another. And aren’t looking to pit anyone against anybody.

Omari Souza:
Like no, one’s asking attendees of one, not to go to the other. And in fact, we’re usually co-promoting whenever Where Are The Black Designers, HOW or Black Ignite has something if they send it to me, I’m always promoting and pushing people to attend. And they’ve done the same thing for me. And it’s really been appreciated.

Maurice Cherry:
Now, you’re juggling State of Black Design, of course, with teaching. You’re a design educator. You’re an assistant professor at Texas State University in Austin. When you were back on the show, the first time you were teaching at Laroche College, which is in Pittsburgh, what is it like teaching at Texas State? Tell me about your classes, your students, how is it?

Omari Souza:
Texas state is a really interesting place. It’s about 30, 40 minutes South of Austin, and also about 30, 40 minutes in north of San Antonio. So it’s sandwiched between these two major cities and in terms of diversity, it’s probably the most diverse institution in terms of student base that I’ve ever taught at.

Omari Souza:
And it’s really beautiful to see in terms of things that I I’ve taught there. I typically teach a few design research classes, both at the graduate and undergraduate level, and I’ve also taught foundations and typography, but I consider myself more to be a design researcher. So I’m always happier teaching the former than the latter courses.
Maurice Cherry:
And now, do you have a specific focus of your design research while you’re at Texas State?

Omari Souza:
I would say yes and no. So at the graduate level, in the past, I’ve taught a class called communication seminar, which is an introduction to design research methods that students can use for their thesis. So I begin educating students on research methodologies, like quantitative research methods, literature reviews, so forth and so forth. How do you build your design direction, map out plans, constructing logic models, so forth and so forth. Identifying stakeholders, yada yada yada.

Omari Souza:
I teach a class called design for experience as well, where I typically tend to leverage some of my own graduate based research around using design not only to using design classroom, not only is a space to develop new skill sets, but also expand considerations on what things could be applicable for. So I’ll teach design research methods and some UX techniques, but rather than using them for digital artifact, I ask students to expand their thought process on what an interface is.

Omari Souza:
It doesn’t necessarily have to be strictly digital, but it’s anything that anybody interacts with. So if we’re designing for behavior purposes, how could we use these research methodologies in order to bring about a particular behavioral change versus doing it strictly for additional clicks or site visits or things of that nature? Sometimes we will work in collaboration with other organizations. One summer, I saw the course, we worked in collaboration with Kyahokas Municipality Housing Authority. They were applying for 50 million grant to improve the quality of life for residents in a lower income community.

Omari Souza:
And we asked to be a part of the project. So we jumped in while they were performing the research and began asking questions to identify certain things that were happening in the community that design could be used to leverage as a solution to improve quality of life. One of the problems that we ended up finding was given the conditions that folks are living in.

Omari Souza:
One thing that they definitely were missing was adequate opportunities to build community with one another and communicate with one another while also bottlenecks around communicating with the leasing office and people that managed the property.

Omari Souza:
So we proposed a number of solutions that had nothing to do with digital components, but were more so interfaces that we can build on the community grounds themselves to improve that person to person and person to business interaction on these grounds in order to change some of the cultural issues that were happening within that particular space.

Omari Souza:
This year, there were a few projects that we’re going to be working on as well, that are all about community engagement, interacting with a group of people, but then attempting to solve a problem for behavioral change while using design as the so, and for me, I find this a lot more interesting than working along the lines of an arbitrary design brief, because I feel like the strictly giving students a brief, doesn’t give them an opportunity to meet people and expand their thought processes.

Omari Souza:
And if, as designers we’re supposed to be this empathetic group, but we never get an opportunity to meet or engage with the people that we’re designing for. We’re strictly designing within our own locked in biases. And that can also be very dangerous for marginalized audiences.

Omari Souza:
So putting them in a position where they have to get out of the classroom and interact with an audience, puts them in a space where they’re challenging their own perceptions and what a problem is. And if they’re designing with this audience and as they’re working, as they’re meeting them, as they’re engaging them, it puts them in a, in a process of thinking, my best results or realizing that my best results can come at hand when I’m working directly with the person who the solution is for versus working behind a desk without ever having to engage with them.

Maurice Cherry:
I’m curious, you’ve been there now for about three years. How would you say things have changed since when you first started there? Because it sounds like what you are doing right now is something you maybe have to work up to getting to.

Omari Souza:
I’m still at a point where I’m attempting to recommend changes and then get buy-in around those changes, which isn’t a slight against Texas State. I think the reality is I’m an extremely young professor. I’m only 35 years old. And many of the professors around me have been teaching for just as long as I’ve been living in some cases.

Omari Souza:
So for me to be this young and come and make attempts to challenge the way that certain things are being done, even if I’m citing that in new research or things of that nature for any program would be a lot to take in because that whether directly indirectly illuminates that for potential changes to come they’ll need structural pedagogical changes as well to make room for some of these changes. So I think, for myself there’s still this need to get buy in or to prove the benefit of particular things that other folks may not be too familiar with.

Maurice Cherry:
How would you say you’ve grown as an educator since you first started teaching?

Omari Souza:
I think there’s a number of different things. I think naivete is something that I’ve shed a lot. Have you ever seen the… There was a documentary on charter schools? It was called Waiting On Superman.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I saw that.

Omari Souza:
Yeah. I’ve watched it again recently. There’s a section of the documentary. One of the educators who started a charter school in Harlem was talking about how he went to get his degree at Howard and he’d learnt so much and felt like as soon as he got out, he’d be able to change and improve the entire education system within two years, three years, if he was being lazy, but he had all the information necessary and he was going to get in there and make all those changes. I think that’s where I was when I first started teaching, I was really enthusiastic about the education that I got.

Omari Souza:
I felt super empowered about it, and I immediately felt like I’m going to jump in and make all of these changes. The longer I’ve been teaching, the more I’ve realized that it’s never an immediate change. You can never change the flow of the river that you’re in, but you can disrupt the water.

Omari Souza:
And if you make these minor disruptions over time, you can make an immediate impact. Well, not immediate, but you can make this impact for that immediate space, but you might not be able to change the flow of the water that you’re currently in. And I think that’s something that I’ve had to sit with and I guess be more strategic about what impact can I have and what impact will I be okay with having, if I can’t change the entire flow of the rigor itself?

Maurice Cherry:
What do you think about this state of design education now as it relates to diversity? Because I’d imagine with the years that you’ve put on this conference now and even changing to different schools that maybe you have gathered a bit of a reputation, a good reputation, I mean, but from your perspective, how do you see design education?

Omari Souza:
I think design education is at this really interesting spot. I think there are topics about decolonizing design practice and there are a lot of people that are doing a lot of work on plural versatile approaches professors such as Leslie and Noel that continue to do amazing things and encourage me in a lot of the stuff that I do.

Omari Souza:
I think there are a lot of folks like Cheryl Miller and her collaborations with designers off of the continent of America and working with Afro based designers and attempting to bring their aesthetic and their design language onto the forefront, I think is also something that’s really interesting from an institution standpoint and a university standpoint. I think a lot of the difficulty ends up being in people being threatened by that change or being uncertain, how to handle the new wave of demands that are coming for design institutions and programs, especially as the student populist becomes browner from one generation to the next.

Omari Souza:
I think in a lot of ways, it’s an exciting time to be a student. And it’s an exciting time to be a professor and see universities make room for these things to happen. I would imagine a difficult time for those that have no idea what steps to take next. Like if I’ve never had to consider anything other than Swiss design or anything other than the Bowhouse.

Omari Souza:
And now you’re saying that there are all of these other visual languages or aesthetical approaches or cultures that I should include in my curriculum and give equal amounts of respect to this one thing that I’ve made my bread and butter over the last 30 to 40 years. I can imagine that there’s a lot of anxiety, but still it’s necessary. And anxiety is never a reason to be paralyzed by anything.

Maurice Cherry:
Have you encountered any of that? Like from other educators?

Omari Souza:
Yeah. All the time. It’s usually not as direct as this makes me feel nervous or I don’t necessarily know how I can stack up to attempting to do this, but a lot of times it may come off in passive aggressive terms of we’ve done it this way for so long. And maybe you should just learn how to do it the way that we’ve been doing it before you make re for changes.

Omari Souza:
Yeah. I don’t think people ever come out and say that, “Hey, this makes me feel uncomfortable or insecure about approaching this particular subject matter. Can I work with you on this?” It’s usually this attempt to stopping the clock or slowing down change. And that’s not necessarily me saying a Texas State thing. I think that’s something that that’s happening in a lot of places within the industry.

Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I’ve had a few other design educators on the show particularly last year that spoke to that as well. And also speaking to how, I guess students are looking for more from their design curriculum. They’re looking for more from their design educators in terms of how they see the world now and the work that they’re doing, they want to know how can they be more, I guess, involved in different causes and stuff like that. From your perspective, have you seen a similar kind of change over the years from your students?

Omari Souza:
Yeah, definitely. So my graduate research, when I was at Kent State University, there were a few interviews that I did where I asked students how they ended up choosing their majors. And there were a number of students that ended up choosing a major just because some of the course material was interesting to them. So there was one student in particular, the group in a predominantly white neighborhood, but that a student was Black.

Omari Souza:
So that student felt that there wasn’t enough access that he had to finding out more information about people that looked like him within the city and neighborhood he lived in. So he ended up taking a few African American history courses, and then that ended up becoming his major because he fell in love with the subject matter. I feel like there are a number of visual students that I’ve taught that have been a part of design programs, both at Texas State and Laroche.

Omari Souza:
And Tri-C when I taught there. And also at Kent State when I was a graduate assistant and there’s this interest in exploring visual languages that relate to them culturally, that they can see themselves in. And I think it’s really amazing for them when they find that, but it does create a space of pedagogical opportunities for professors. If we’re willing to bravely lean into it. One conversation I had with a few of my cohorts recently, especially considering that Texas and the university is within the Southwest of the nation.

Omari Souza:
I mentioned, I think it would be a really good idea to start doing research and creating coursework and materials around the influence of San Marcos has a huge Mexican population as is Texas in general, but trying to do this course on the influence of Mexican and Southern American aesthetics on the design language of the Southwest, I feel like you teach a course like that to some of our students that are looking for something different than Swiss and Bowhouse design or your ecentric perspectives on things.

Omari Souza:
I think that’s also another opportunity where you can then teach something that allows a student to have a greater appreciation for a culture outside of themselves. Or give a student an opportunity to further contextualize their own identity and have a greater appreciation for some of the things that they were exposed to without having full knowledge of what the richness of these things were

Maurice Cherry:
Now, along with those kinds of opportunities. You’ve also managed to network with and meet a lot of other Black design educators. Tell me how that’s been.

Omari Souza:
It’s been amazing to be completely honest with you. I’ve been able since the first State of Black Design to meet a number of people and try to find ways to collaborate and or talk about new pedagogical approaches or projects that are being offered in classrooms. I’ve met consistently with Kalina Sales, Dr. Perry sweeper and Dr. Oji in our biweekly DFA meetings and some of the stuff that they’re working on.

Omari Souza:
And some of the insights that they share with me are super invaluable in terms of my growth as a professor, I meet consistently with Teresa Moses, she and I are curating a State of Black Design book. And of course, during these meetings where we’re talking about the book assignments, they’re consistent topics or the discussion points around what’s being done in our classroom, Dr. Leslie Noel and I are working on a book called Restorative Design.

Omari Souza:
I’m learning a lot about her practice, not just through writing with her, but even some of the experiences she shares and what we’ve been writing, all of which enriches me in a lot of ways that I may not say to them consistently, but it’s been an amazing opportunity to see and hear other people that look like me that are dealing with students similar to who I’m dealing with, give me some of their master tips, or even seeing some of them just blow up and shine in their own career. Professors like Jennifer White Johnson, every time I look up, she’s doing something else amazing. And the community that she advocates for and the work that she’s been getting has been amazing to sit back and watch.

Maurice Cherry:
What do you want to see this year? Is there anything you want to accomplish outside of course, of State of Black Design, but what do you want to see this year?

Omari Souza:
I think the thing that I want to see this year, that I’m hoping that I can pull off is really this professional development. Well, not really professional development. I’m hoping that these tables that we build, whether it be Where Are The Black Designers, Black Ignite, [HUE] and the State of Black Design, that we find a way to continue to pouring into our collective audiences, outside our annual conferences.

Omari Souza:
I know where the black designers has a really good community. They keep in touch via Slack, but trying to find a way to continue growing people in their own personal endeavors, not just through professional development methods, but also just through personal artistic explorations.

Omari Souza:
I think having a space where we allow other creatives to learn more about what it is that they want to do, but make it give room for people to explore new avenues and develop aesthetics and techniques in their own visual approaches would be something that I would love. And I think it’s something that we need currently as well.

Maurice Cherry:
And also you teased this book idea a little bit earlier. Tell me about that.

Omari Souza:
Yeah. So after the first State of Black Design, we did a CFP called proposal for essays, from anybody who was interested in contributing. We’ve gotten the number so far and a commitment to print from Intellect Publishing. So currently Theresa and I are reading through it and making attempts to decide what changes need to be made if there are essays that need to be lengthened and things of that nature, but we’re hoping that’ll be published by next year.
Maurice Cherry:
Nice. Congratulations on that.

Omari Souza:
Thank you kindly.

Maurice Cherry:
So overall, and this may be a tall order from where you’re at now, but aside from this year where do you see yourself in the future five years from now? What sort of work do you want to be doing?

Omari Souza:
Five years from now. I’m hoping I have tenure, but the work I’d like to do, I think it’s similar to what I was hoping to do in my initial interview. I would to begin a design for social good innovation practice that I do alongside my teaching. I’m hoping that the traditional classes that I’m allowed to teach that over time, I’m given room to change them slightly.

Omari Souza:
So it’s not just commercial focus, but we’re giving them techniques and tools that they can use for commercial entities if they choose to, but also allowing them to advocate or contextualize their own experiences through these methodologies as well. I’m hoping that I can continue to write these books. I’m hoping that yeah, five years down line, all of these books that I’m working on currently are published, that I can continue to evolve the State of Black Design to meet the needs of its audience.

Maurice Cherry:
Sounds good. Well, just to wrap things up here, where can our audience find out more about you, about State of Black Design, about everything you’re working on? Where can they find that information?

Omari Souza:
You guys can find me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty active there. I do have a site omarisouza.com, and finally, I’m, I’m pretty active on Instagram, which is just Omari.Souza.

Maurice Cherry:
And the event?

Omari Souza:
The event is stateofblackdesign.com.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. And by the time this comes out, tickets will be available so people can register to sign up, correct?

Omari Souza:
Yes, sir. Please register. We’d love to see you guys there.

Maurice Cherry:
All right. Sounds good. Well, Omari Souza, I want to thank you so much for coming back on show. We’ve kept in touch since we have done that interview back in 2017. So it’s been amazing to just see your growth as an educator, as a researcher, and really getting more involved in doing community work with what you’re doing with State of Black Design. So I’m excited to see what is going to come next for you in the future. And of course, I’ll definitely be tuned in for this year’s event. Hopefully, People that are listen will tune in as well. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Omari Souza:
No problem at all. I appreciate you as well for having me and all the advice that you’ve given me as well since 2017.

Sponsored by Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit

Brevity & Wit is a strategy and design firm committed to designing a more inclusive and equitable world.

We accomplish this through graphic design, presentations and workshops around I-D-E-A: inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.

If you’re curious to learn how to combine a passion for I-D-E-A with design, check us out at brevityandwit.com.

Brevity & Wit — creative excellence without the grind.

Sponsored by The State of Black Design Conference

The State of Black Design

Texas State University’s Communication Design Program is excited to announce The State of Black Design Conference, a three day virtual event March 4-6, 2022.

This year’s theme is “family reunion”, and there will be over 50 amazing speakers, including author and educator Jelani Cobb, and world-renowned poet, activist, and educator Nikki Giovanni.

This year debuts the State of Black Design’s Resume Book initiative, so if you’re a Black design student, or you’re a Black designer looking for your next role, then listen up!

You will be able to submit your resume and your portfolio to the Resume Book, along with your institution of study and major if you’re a student, and recruiters and employers will have access to it before the event. If you’re interested and you want to be included in the Resume Book, send your info to blackdesign@txstate.edu with the subject line “Resume Book”. You have until March 3, 2022 to submit.

The State of Black Design Conference is brought to you with the support of the University of Texas at Austin, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, Microsoft, General Motors, Design for America, Civilla, IDSA, AIGA, and Revision Path.

Visit The State of Black Design Conference website for tickets. Hope to see you there!